Interactive Visual Methods for Partitioning Multidimensional Spatial Data

该研究项目的目标是利用人工智能和信息可视化的方法，开发用于空间多变量数据交互可视化探索的创新工具。这些工具的动机是学校重新划分选区的问题，并与霍华德县(马里兰州)公立学校系统的工作人员合作进行。在这个项目中开发的方法产生了关于优化标准的多个类似的解决方案，但试图确保这些解决方案在质量上是不同的。交互式环境允许用户浏览“附近”的解决方案，调查每个解决方案的微小扰动，同时减少严重不同的解决方案的数量。这种交互式可视化方法预计将在学校重新划分选区领域非常有效，从而大大减少制定新的重新划分选区计划的时间，并相应增加可有效生成和比较的计划的数量。这将改进学校重新划分学区的进程，其中可视化工具将提高学校系统解释、证明和传播拟议计划和相关量化评估的能力。该项目中开发的方法也将适用于几乎任何其他需要根据某些标准对多维空间数据进行划分的领域。该项目的网站(http://maple.cs.umbc.edu/redistricting/))将用于传播这项研究的结果。

The goal of this research project is to develop innovative tools for interactive visual exploration of spatial multivariate data, using methods from artificial intelligence and information visualization. The tools is motivated by the problem of school redistricting, and is conducted in collaboration with staff from the Howard County (Maryland) Public School System. The approach developed in this project produces multiple similar solutions with respect to optimization criteria, but trying to ensure that the solutions are qualitatively different. The interactive environment allows the user to browse through "nearby" solutions, investigate minor perturbations of each solution, while reducing the number of critically different solutions. This interactive visual method is expected to be very effective in the school redistricting domain, resulting in a substantial reduction in the time to develop new redistricting plans, and a corresponding increase in the number of plans that can effectively be generated and compared. This will result improved school redistricting process, where the visual tools will improve the ability of the school system to explain, justify, and disseminate proposed plans and the associated quantitative evaluation. The methods developed in this project will also be applicable in almost any other domain where multidimensional spatial data need to be partitioned according to some criteria. The project's Web site (http://maple.cs.umbc.edu/redistricting/) will be used to disseminate the results of this research.