Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository
Managed by John Fallon and Georges Grinstein at UMass Amherst
Mistford is a mid-size city is located to the southwest of a large nature preserve. The city has a small industrial area with four light-manufacturing endeavors. Mitch Vogel is a post-doc student studying ornithology at Mistford College and has been discovering signs that the number of nesting pairs of the Rose-Crested Blue Pipit, a popular local bird due to its attractive plumage and pleasant songs, is decreasing! The decrease is sufficiently significant that the Pangera Ornithology Conservation Society is sponsoring Mitch to undertake additional studies to identify the possible reasons. Mitch is gaining access to several datasets that may help him in his work, and he has asked you (and your colleagues) as experts in visual analytics to help him analyze these datasets.
As Mitch works independently, he realizes that he cannot continually visit all areas of the preserve to inspect for environmental impacts as well as he would like to. He realizes that his analysis would be incomplete without thorough surveillance and knowledge of the preserve health over time. Fortunately, Mitch has acquired data from some commercial multi-spectral imagers that have been routinely covering the nature preserve every few weeks. Mitch believes that a visual analytics approach can help him achieve an understanding of the preserve health and alert him to possible conditions that may be impacting his birds.
Georges Grinstein, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Mark Whiting, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Kristen Liggett, Air Force Research Laboratory
Diane Staheli, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Jordan Crouser, Smith College
John Fallon, University of Massachusetts Amherst