Visual Analytics in the Aviation and Maritime Domains

Visual analytics is a research discipline that is based on acknowledging the power and the necessity of the human vision, understanding, and reasoning in data analysis and problem solving. It develops a methodology of analysis that facilitates human activities by means of interactive visual representations of information. By examples from the domains of aviation and maritime transportation, we demonstrate the essence of the visual analytics methods and their utility for investigating properties of available data and analysing data for understanding real-world phenomena and deriving valuable knowledge. We describe four case studies in which distinct kinds of knowledge have been derived from trajectories of vessels and airplanes and related spatial and temporal data by human analytical reasoning empowered by interactive visual interfaces combined with computational operations.