{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,21]],"date-time":"2026-04-21T03:11:08Z","timestamp":1776741068524,"version":"3.51.2"},"reference-count":35,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,27]],"date-time":"2021-12-27T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1640563200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The application potential of Visual Analytics (VA), with its supporting interactive 2D and 3D visualization techniques, in the environmental domain is unparalleled. Such advanced systems may enable an in-depth interactive exploration of multifaceted geospatial and temporal changes in very large and complex datasets. This is facilitated by a unique synergy of modules for simulation, analysis, and visualization, offering instantaneous visual feedback of transformative changes in the underlying data. However, even if the resulting knowledge holds great potential for supporting decision-making in the environmental domain, the consideration of such techniques still have to find their way to daily practice. To advance these developments, we demonstrate four case studies that portray different opportunities in data visualization and VA in the context of climate research and natural disaster management. Firstly, we focus on 2D data visualization and explorative analysis for climate change detection and urban microclimate development through a comprehensive time series analysis. Secondly, we focus on the combination of 2D and 3D representations and investigations for flood and storm water management through comprehensive flood and heavy rain simulations. These examples are by no means exhaustive, but serve to demonstrate how a VA framework may apply to practical research.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info13010007","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,28]],"date-time":"2021-12-28T01:18:15Z","timestamp":1640654295000},"page":"7","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":15,"title":["Combining 2D and 3D Visualization with Visual Analytics in the Environmental Domain"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-5825-8237","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Milena","family":"Vuckovic","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"VRVis Zentrum f\u00fcr Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH, 1220 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9638-6344","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Johanna","family":"Schmidt","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"VRVis Zentrum f\u00fcr Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH, 1220 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9373-6409","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thomas","family":"Ortner","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"VRVis Zentrum f\u00fcr Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH, 1220 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2481-6720","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Daniel","family":"Cornel","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"VRVis Zentrum f\u00fcr Virtual Reality und Visualisierung Forschungs-GmbH, 1220 Vienna, Austria"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,27]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Anouncia, S.M., Gohel, H.A., and Subbiah, V. (2020). Data Visualization: Trends and Challenges Toward Multidisciplinary PerceptionI, Springer. [1st ed.].","DOI":"10.1007\/978-981-15-2282-6"},{"key":"ref_2","unstructured":"Schmidt, J. (2020). Visual Data Science. Data Visualization, InTechOpen."},{"key":"ref_3","unstructured":"Cook, K.A., and Thomas, J.J. (2005). Visual Representations and Interactions Technologies. Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics, IEEE Computer Society."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"122","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2014.2329308","article-title":"The Impact of Interactivity on Comprehending 2D and 3D Visualizations of Movement Data","volume":"21","author":"Amini","year":"2015","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1095","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2008.59","article-title":"A taxonomy of 3D occlusion management for visualization","volume":"14","author":"Elmqvist","year":"2008","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_6","unstructured":"Bleisch, S., and Nebiker, S. (2008, January 3\u201311). Connected 2D and 3D visualizations for the interactive exploration of spatial information. Proceedings of the 21th ISPRS Congress, Beijing, China."},{"key":"ref_7","unstructured":"Ortner, T. (2020). Tight Integration of Visual Analysis and 3D Real-Time Rendering. [Doctoral Dissertation, Vienna University of Technology]."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jern, M., Johansson, S., Johansson, J., and Franzen, J. (2007, January 2). The gav toolkit for multiple linked views. Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Coordinated and Multiple Views in Exploratory Visualization, Zurich, Switzerland.","DOI":"10.1109\/CMV.2007.21"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sorger, J., B\u00fchler, K., Schulze, F., Liu, T., and Dickson, B. (2013, January 13). Neuromap\u2014Interactive Graph Visualization of the Fruit Fly\u2019s Neural Circuit. Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Biological Data Visualization, Atlanta, GA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/BioVis.2013.6664349"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1559","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2018.2802945","article-title":"Shadow accrual maps: Efficient accumulation of city-scale shadows over time","volume":"25","author":"Miranda","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Aigner, W., Miksch, S., Schumann, H., and Tominski, C. (2011). Visualization of Time-Oriented Data, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-0-85729-079-3"},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Heer, J., Kong, N., and Agrawala, M. (2009, January 4\u20139). Sizing the Horizon: The Effects of Chart Size and Layering on the Graphical Perception of Time Series Visualizations. Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Boston, MA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1518701.1518897"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hashimoto, Y., and Matsushita, R. (2012, January 11\u201313). Heat Map Scope Technique for Stacked Time-series Data Visualization. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Information Visualization, Montpellier, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/IV.2012.53"},{"key":"ref_14","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). Tableau. Available online: https:\/\/www.tableau.com\/."},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). QlikView. Available online: https:\/\/www.qlik.com\/."},{"key":"ref_16","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). MS Power, BI. Available online: https:\/\/powerbi.microsoft.com\/."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3011","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2018.2859973","article-title":"Commercial Visual Analytics Systems-Advances in the Big Data Analytics Field","volume":"25","author":"Behrisch","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"B\u00f6gl, M., Aigner, W., Filzmoser, P., Gschwandtner, T., Lammarsch, T., Miksch, S., and Rind, A. (2015, January 25\u201326). Integrating Predictions in Time Series Model Selection. Proceedings of the EuroVis Workshop on Visual Analytics, Cagliari, Italy."},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1601","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2020.3028889","article-title":"A Visual Analytics Framework for Reviewing Multivariate Time-Series Data with Dimensionality Reduction","volume":"27","author":"Fujiwara","year":"2021","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). ArcGIS. Available online: https:\/\/www.arcgis.com\/."},{"key":"ref_21","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). GeoMedia. Available online: https:\/\/www.hexagongeospatial.com\/products\/power-portfolio\/geomedia."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1169","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2007.70574","article-title":"Legible Cities: Focus-Dependent Multi-Resolution Visualization of Urban Relationships","volume":"13","author":"Chang","year":"2007","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vuckovic, M., and Schmidt, J. (2020). Visual Analytics Approach to Comprehensive Meteorological Time-Series Analysis. Data, 5.","DOI":"10.3390\/data5040094"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vuckovic, M., and Schmidt, J. (2021). Visual Analytics for Climate Change Detection in Meteorological Time-Series. Forecasting, 3.","DOI":"10.3390\/forecast3020018"},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"(2021, December 03). NASA Climate, Available online: https:\/\/climate.nasa.gov\/scientific-consensus\/."},{"key":"ref_26","unstructured":"(2021, October 29). ZAMG. Available online: http:\/\/at-wetter.tk\/."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Santamouris, M. (2019). Urban Heat Island and Local Climate Change. Minimizing Energy Consumption, Energy Poverty and Global and Local Climate Change in the Built Environment: Innovating to Zero, Elsevier Inc.","DOI":"10.1016\/B978-0-12-811417-9.00003-9"},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1270","DOI":"10.1016\/j.solener.2020.10.050","article-title":"On the thermal response of buildings under the synergic effect of heat waves and urban heat island","volume":"221","author":"Zinzi","year":"2020","journal-title":"Sol. Energy"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"25","DOI":"10.1111\/cgf.13669","article-title":"Interactive Visualization of Flood and Heavy Rain Simulations","volume":"38","author":"Cornel","year":"2019","journal-title":"Comput. Graph. Forum"},{"key":"ref_30","first-page":"1062","article-title":"Visual analysis and steering of flooding simulations","volume":"9","author":"Ribicic","year":"2012","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."},{"key":"ref_31","unstructured":"(2021, October 29). Austria Open Data Initiative 2021. Available online: https:\/\/www.data.gv.at\/."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Cornel, D., Buttinger-Kreuzhuber, A., and Waser, J. (2020, January 17). Integrated Simulation and Visualization for Flood Management. Proceedings of the Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference Talks (SIGGRAPH \u201920 Talks), New York, NY, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3388767.3408335"},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"89","DOI":"10.1016\/j.advwatres.2019.03.010","article-title":"A fast second-order shallow water scheme on two-dimensional structured grids over abrupt topography","volume":"127","author":"Noelle","year":"2019","journal-title":"Adv. Water Resour."},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"331","DOI":"10.1111\/cgf.12645","article-title":"Visualization of Object-Centered Vulnerability to Possible Flood Hazards","volume":"34","author":"Cornel","year":"2015","journal-title":"Comput. Graph. Forum"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"641","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2016.2598592","article-title":"Visplause: Visual Data Quality Assessment of Many Time Series Using Plausibility Checks","volume":"23","author":"Arbesser","year":"2017","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph."}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/13\/1\/7\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T07:54:12Z","timestamp":1760169252000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/13\/1\/7"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,27]]},"references-count":35,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,1]]}},"alternative-id":["info13010007"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info13010007","relation":{},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2021,12,27]]}}}