Motivation and Workshop Goals

During the COVID-19 pandemic, data visualization played a highly visible role in supporting decision-making and information dissemination. While a large number of online platforms have provided various regularly-updated COVID-19 key indicators to worldwide or regional audiences, there have also been R&D activities conducted by visualization and visual analytics (VIS) researchers and practitioners. Although some of the latter activities have been reported in publications, many have not become public knowledge.

It is highly desirable for VIS scientists, researchers, and practitioners to share their experience and knowledge gained through their efforts made in supporting the COVID-19 pandemic responses, and to share their insight and foresight as to how VIS can better support future pandemic and other emergency responses. This workshop will enable VIS researchers and practitioners to share their experience, knowledge, and reflection and offer their insight and foresight about the role of VIS in pandemic and emergency responses. It will also allow the VIS community to compile one or more archivable collections of records about various VIS activities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID-19 may now turn into an Endemic, it is still very important to gather the built-up knowledge from COVID-19 in the visualization community, also to be better prepared in case of future Pandemics. Our workshop has the following goals:

• To provide VIS researchers and practitioners with the opportunity:
• for sharing their experience, knowledge, and reflection about their R&D activities in the context of pandemic responses;
• for offering their insight on how VIS research and techniques have helped COVID-19 pandemic responses and can be improved to provide better support in future emergency responses;
• To provide the VIS community with a timely mechanism:
• to compile one or more archivable collections of records on various VIS activities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic;
• for stimulating a new R&D agenda in preparation for future emergency responses.

Check back here or follow us on Twitter for the latest updates. For questions, please do not hesitate to email us at: vis4pandemres2023@cgv.tugraz.at