Applying Heat Maps in a Web-Based Collaborative Graph Visualization

The visual analysis of large and complex networks is a challenging task in many fields, such as systems biology or social sciences. Often, various domain experts work together to improve the analysis time or the quality of the analysis results. Collaborative visualization tools can facilitate this process. We propose a new web-based visualization environment which supports distributed, synchronous and asynchronous collaboration for graphs with up to 10,000 nodes and edges. In addition to standard collaboration features like event tracking or synchronizing, our client/server-based system provides visualization and interaction techniques for better navigation, guid- ance and overview of the overall data set. During asynchronous col- laborations, network changes made by specific analysts or even just visited elements are highlighted on demand by heat maps. These heat map representations are user-sensitive in a sense that the current analyst is able to perceive which changes were made by others.