Today, in many spheres of human activity, massive sets of data are collected and stored. As the volumes of data available to lawmakers, civil servants, business people and scientists increase, their effective use becomes more challenging. Keeping up to date with the flood of data, using standard tools for data management and analysis, is fraught with difficulty. The field of visual analytics seeks to provide people with better and more effective ways to understand and analyse these large datasets, while also enabling them to act upon their findings immediately, in real-time. Visual analytics integrates the analytic capabilities of the computer and the abilities of the human analyst, thus allowing novel discoveries and empowering individuals to take control of the analytical process. Visual analytics sheds light on unexpected and hidden insights, which may lead to beneficial and profitable innovation.

This book is one of the outcomes of a two-year project called VisMaster CA, a coordination action funded by the European Commission from August 2008 to September 2010. The goal of VisMaster was to join European academic and industrial R&D excellence from several individual disciplines, forming a strong visual analytics research community. An array of thematic working groups was set up by the consortium, which focused on advancing the state of the art in visual analytics. These working groups joined research excellence in the fields of data management, data analysis, spatial-temporal data, and human visual perception research with the wider visualisation research community.