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IEEE VIS Workshop on Visualization for Pandemic and Emergency Responses 2023 (Vis4PandEmRes)
https://vis4pandemres.github.io/
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Half-day workshop at IEEE VIS, Melbourne, Australia, 22-27 October

Workshop date: October 22 or 23, 2023


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 yet.


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Aims and Scope
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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 to inform how VIS can better support future pandemic and 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 achievable collections of records about various VIS activities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. While COVID-19 has now progressed to the endemic phase, it is still very important to gather the built-up knowledge from COVID-19 in the visualization community to be better prepared for future Pandemics. Our workshop has the following aims:

(A) 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; and offering their insight how VIS research and techniques have helped COVID-19 pandemic responses and can be improved to provide better support in future emergency responses.

(B) To provide the VIS community with a timely mechanism for: compiling one or more achievable collections of records on various VIS activities around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic; and for stimulating a new R&D agenda in preparation for future emergency responses.


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Topics
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VIS researchers and practitioners may share their experience, knowledge, insight, and foresight on all aspects of VIS research and applications in the context of pandemics and emergency responses. The topics of contributions may include, but are not limited to the following examples:

• VIS for information dissemination to the public,
• VIS for routine or critical decision-making,
• VIS for highlighting and responding to mis/disinformation during health and emergency responses,
• VIS for supporting the development of simulation and forecasting models,
• VIS theories, methodologies, and guidelines useful in pandemic and emergency responses,
• Perception and cognition in VIS applications for pandemic and emergency responses,
• Methods for engaging and collaborating with domain experts (e.g., healthcare experts, epidemiologists, modelers, data analysts, policymakers),
• VIS infrastructures, VIS systems, VIS tools, & other types of VIS software for supporting pandemic & emergency responses,
• Design of dashboards, storytelling VIS, and visual representations for visualizing pandemic and emergency data,
• Data transformation algorithms for processing pandemic and emergency data,
• Specific data types or specific analytics problems:
• Uncertainty & biases in data, data processing, visual representations,
• VIS processes, decision processes, & public information dissemination,
• VIS for supporting sensitivity analysis,
• Bioinformatics data,
• Medical and healthcare data,
• Geographical and geoinformation data,
• Social media data,
• Contact-and-tracing data,
• Ensemble modeling data.
• Data quality and predictive value.
• Data integration, organization, and retrieval,
• Rapid VIS software engineering (including requirement analysis, design, development, testing, and evaluation) in emergency responses,
• Research funding and project management during the pandemic and emergency responses,
• Readiness of VIS resources for future emergency responses,
• Requirements for VIS techniques in future emergency responses.


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Submission Types and Criteria
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The workshop will be open to all IEEE VIS attendees. The workshop will solicit two types of contributions:

(A) Paper — Authors may submit a technical paper on a piece of work that has not been previously published, and optionally, an accompanying bulletin video (same as the bulletin video below but without a summary document). The length of a paper is 4-6 pages. The paper will undergo a review process with a technical depth and rigor appropriate for VIS workshop papers. Accepted papers will be published in IEEE Xplore and are to be presented during the workshop.

(B) Bulletin — Authors are required to submit a short video to share their work and experience together with a summary document of up to 2 pages maximum. The videos of accepted bulletin submissions, as well as optional videos of accepted papers, will be combined to an archive of videos documenting the contributions to COVID-19 responses. Like abstracts or posters, bulletins are not considered research papers. Because we aim to compile a comprehensive record as specified in (b1), the works suitable to be reported in bulletins include:
A piece of work has already been published, and the authors wish to keep a record in the community archive.
Authors wish to keep a record in the community archive without affecting the plan of submitting a research paper in the future.
Authors do not have a plan for a research paper but wish to keep a record of their effort and activities in the community archive.
The metadata of each paper accepted by the workshop.

We note, authors of accepted bulletin submissions are not required to present these in person at the conference.


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Important Dates
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Publication of CfP: May 11, 2023
Submissions due: July 8, 2023
Notification: July 28, 2023
Camera-Ready: August 21, 2023
Workshop: October 22 or 23, 2023

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Submission Information
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Papers:
• Size: 4–6 pages, following the IEEE VGTC Conference Style
• Please add the [PAPER] label to your submission title in PCS.

Bulletins:
• Size: A short video with a summary document of up to 2 pages maximum, in the IEEE VGTC Conference Style
• Please add the [BULLETIN] label to your submission title in PCS.

All submissions need to be made through the PCS system. Please go to: https://new.precisionconference.com/submissions, and select Society: VGTC, Conference/Journal: VIS2023, Track: VIS 2023 Vis4PanDemRes.

Paper template: IEEE VGTC Conference Style
https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/


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Organizers and Contact
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Workshop Co-chairs

• Alfie Abdul-Rahman, King's College London, UK
• Kelly Gaither, University of Texas at Austin, USA
• Wolfgang Jentner, University of Oklahoma, USA
• Tobias Schreck, Graz University of Technology, Austria

Advisory Panel Co-Chairs
• Min Chen, University of Oxford, UK
• David Ebert, University of Oklahoma, USA

Please see the workshop webpage at https://vis4pandemres.github.io/, and contact the workshop chairs at vis4pandemres2023@cgv.tugraz.at for any questions.