Author Archive

We recently released a new major version of GLEAMviz. This application provides a user-friendly interface for using the GLEAM engine, a server-side simulator of the spreading of infectious diseases on a global scale.

Version 3 of the GLEAMviz now provides the Simulation Builder, a new interface for setting up the simulations, and two new visualizations.

Simulation Builder interface.

The first new visualization is based on the SPaTo visualization developed by Christian Thiemann. I adapted this visualization to fit the specifics of the infection spreading data generated by GLEAM, and reimplemented it for integration in GLEAMviz. The visualization shows the shortest-path tree among the cities with airports, either using a geographic layout or a concentric layout (with or without logarithmic scaling). Animated transitions are provided when the user changes the layout.

SPaTo visualization: geographic layout

SPaTo visualization: concentric shortest-path tree layout

The second new visualization uses an interactive 3D representation of the world. The incidence spreading is shown as an animated texture, while the initial seedings are shown as 3D arcs.

GLEAMviz 3D Globe visualization

Accompanying this new release I also worked on a new gleamviz.org website and promotional material.

New GLEAMviz.org website

An updated version of our Epidemic Planet exhibit is currently shown in the Epidèmia show in CosmoCaixa, the awesome science museum in Barcelona.

Sample of the side-by-side maps with the animated pandemic spread shown in the Epidemic Planet exhibit.

The touch-screen interface of the Epidemic Planet exhibit. The visitors can use this interface to select the epidemic scenarios to compare.

The entrance of the Epidèmia show.

High-Resolution Measurements of Face-to-Face Contact Patterns in a Primary School.

in: PLoS ONE 6(8): e23176. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0023176, August 2011.

authors: Juliette Stehlé, Nicolas Voirin, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Lorenzo Isella, Jean-François Pinton, Marco Quaggiotto, Wouter Van den Broeck, Corinne Régis, Bruno Lina and Philippe Vanhems.

Simulation of an SEIR infectious disease model on the dynamic contact network of conference attendees.

in: BMC Medicine, 9(87), July 2011.

authors: Juliette Stehlé, Nicolas Voirin, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Vittoria Colizza, Lorenzo Isella, Corinne Régis, Jean-François Pinton, Nagham Khanafer, Wouter Van den Broeck, and Philippe Vanhems.

On the Dynamics of Human Proximity for Data Diffusion in Ad-Hoc Networks.

in: Ad Hoc Networks, doi: 10.1016/ j.adhoc.2011.06.003, june 2011.

authors: André Panisson, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Wouter Van den Broeck, Giancarlo Ruffo, and Rossano Schifanella.

Close Encounters in a Pediatric Ward: Measuring Face-to-Face Proximity and Mixing Patterns with Wearable Sensors.

in: PLoS ONE 6(2): e17144. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0017144, March 2011.

authors: Lorenzo Isella, Mariateresa Romano, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Vittoria Colizza, Wouter Van den Broeck, Francesco Gesualdo, Elisabetta Pandolfi, Lucilla Ravà, Caterina Rizzo, Alberto Eugenio Tozzi.

In the SocioPatterns gallery we published a visualization of sixty-nine days of face-to-face contact activity among more than 30,000 persons based on data collected during the INFECTIOUS: STAY AWAY exhibition in the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland. Read more…

Left: Detail of visualization. Right: The complete visualization poster.

The GLEaMviz computational tool, a publicly available software to explore realistic epidemic spreading scenarios at the global scale

in: BMC Infectious Diseases

authors: Wouter Van den Broeck, Corrado Gioannini, Bruno Goncalves, Marco Quaggiotto, Vittoria Colizza, Alessandro Vespignani.

This paper discusses the objectives and functionalities offered by the GLEaMviz Simulator system, comparing these with similar publicly available software tools. A detailed description of the implementation of both the client-side and server-side components that comprise the complete system are given, and a realistic simulation example and its results are discussed.

What’s in a crowd? Analysis of face-to-face behavioral networks

in: Journal of Theoretical Biology

authors: Lorenzo Isella, Juliette Stehlé, Alain Barrat, Ciro Cattuto, Jean-François Pinton, and Wouter Van den Broeck.

This paper presents some interesting analysis of the face-to-face contact data collected with the SocioPatterns sensing platform, compare two settings with very different properties: a scientific conference and a long-running museum exhibition.

Coming March I will give a talk in the ‘Map me if you will’ seminar at the Pixelache Festival of electronic art and subcultures in Helsinki. I will also participate in the related Mapping in Progress workshop on current mapping projects such as Practice Mapping (see this blog entry). I’m really looking forward to both opportunities for auspicious interaction with the community and hope you will be there as well!

I’ve added a new project page on Futurisland, a project I worked on almost a decade ago (it’s absurd how time flies when you’re having fun). Futurisland was a web-based multi-user environment for kids developed in Flash. I had the opportunity to collaborate with some really good artists and developers for this project, the results of which I’m still proud of!

I just published a new project page that provides an overview of the context, objectives and results of the Practice Mapping project, which took part in the Interactivos? workshop in LABoral, Gijon, Spain, in April 2010.

Data Driven Dynamical Networks

From September 26 till October 1, we organized the Data Driven Dynamical Network workshop in Les Houches, France. We brought together a group of people from a variety of scientific backgrounds to share insights in the collection, analysis, application and visualization of data driven dynamical networks.

Connecting the Dots

On 22 October, I gave a talk about Visualizing SocioPatterns at Connecting the Dots, a Network Visualization Symposium at Harvard University, organized by Samuel Arbesman, Michael Barnett, and Jukka-Pekka Onnela from the Harvard Medical School.

GLEaMviz Simulator v2.6

We recently released a new version -v2.6- of the GLEaMviz Simulator application in which we provide an improved visualization of the epidemic spreading. The following movie provides some examples of how this new visualization shows the number of new cases at the cell-level, instead of the less precise basin-level incidence representation used in the previous versions.

The user can now also select from a number of backdrop maps onto which the visualization is projected, details of which are shown in the following figure. The left option is based on the NASA Blue Marble map, while the other two provide a more neutral base onto which the cell-level cases can be inspected with greater visual accuracy.

Epidemic Planet

A new version of the Epidemic Planet exhibit, now with the new visualization of GLEaMviz Simulator v2.6, was shown in the Exhibition hall of the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC10), that was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, from November 13th to 19th. The exhibit was hosted at the booth of the Indiana University, partner of the GLEaMviz project.

The Epidemic Planet is currently also shown in CosmoCaixa Mòbil – Tecnorevolución, a traveling exhibition by the Cosmo Caixa science museum that will set up show in a number of cities in Spain.

We recently released a publicly accessible version of the GLEaMviz Simulator. This client-server system allows its user to design, execute and visualize simulations of world-wide epidemic outbreaks. I have updated my related project page, providing a overview of this novel system’s functionality. You can, of course, also try it out yourself.