An Interactive 3D Metaphor Based Data Drill Down Framework for Vector-Borne Disease Data Exploration

Abstract

Data is a central concept for any scientific or industrial domain. However, the raw data becomes mere a concept if the semantics of the data is not clearly understood. This problem becomes much significant when the dimensions of the data increases. In nature, there is no exact limit to the dimensionality of a dataset which poses a challenge on human cognition capacity in visually exploring and extracting insight from data. Even with the latest technology, data exploration and insight extraction is not an easy task for humans especially with the increasing availability of dimensions. Therefore, the need is more clear to attend to the problem, interactive exploration of multidimensional data. This research observes and investigates the role of an interactive three-dimensional user-interface metaphor in multidimensional data exploration in the context of vector-borne disease surveillance. The core contribution of this research is to introduce a novel algorithm which drives the underlying data exploration mechanism of user-interface metaphor. The algorithm uses a dynamic behavioral model (state machine) fuses with the 3D metaphor to perform interactive multidimensional data exploration. The fused 3D metaphor and data exploration mechanism are presented as a proof of concept prototype to the user. The interactive 3D metaphor and the implemented proof of concepts are evaluated using a usability evaluation experiment based on dengue epidemiology as a case study. The results showed that the proposed approach is valid than the currently available data visualization methods in the context of vector-borne disease surveillance. The proposed solution is intended to be further enhanced and used as well in the other background contexts in the future.