Visualization is a rapidly growing area of computer graphics. Due to the very progressive development of computer technology and especially 3D-graphic boards yesterdays imagination of Visualizations, today is a reality. At Saab Bofors Dynamics in Linköping missile systems are developed. Through the development, different subsystems are simulated before the manufacturing starts. The results of these simulations have to be visualized to get a meaning.

In the history of scientific Visualization techniques there is a lack of social science practices and methodologies. The advent of modern computer graphics brought the use of Visualizations into a whole new era, but even though the tools by which such modern Visualizations are created become easier to access and use, the lack of social science researchers harvesting the benefits of such tools still remain. This ease of use, increase in power and accessibility plus the ever growing need within the natural sciences to augment the human senses has further complicated the relationship between scientific methodologies, validity, reliability and the use of Visualization techniques. This relationship must be explored, demystified and understood in order to fully grasp the impact of Visualization practices when incorporated into any given scientific method. Within the social sciences there is one example of a tradition that has since its conception carried within it a graphical notion and a Visualization practice.

This study has been carried out in cooperation with Unilever and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. In areas of statistics and image processing, both the amount of data and the dimensions are increasing rapidly and an interactive Visualization tool that lets the user perform real-time analysis can save valuable time. Real-time cropping and drill-down considerably facilitate the analysis process and yield more accurate decisions. In the Smartdoc project, there has been a request for a component used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. As the Smartdoc project aims to develop smart, interactive components to be used on low-end systems, the implementation of the self-organizing map algorithm proposes which dimensions to visualize.

Forestry in Sweden is currently conducted in a manner aiming at equating the production objectives and the biodiversity. To ensure that biodiversity is maintained, patches that are considered to be valuable now or in the future is saved in final fellings. How the tree retention areas will grow into the future forest stands is yet unknown.The purpose of this study was to visualize how different scenarios of natural consideration taken at final felling will evolve in a long term perspective, for two rotation periods. Projections of the forest conditions were executed with the decision support system Heureka and its applications PlanStart and PlanWise. The information about the projected forests was then used for the Visualizations which were created in the software Visual Nature Studio.

This thesis examines the effects of electricity Visualization in an office building. The subject was investigated through the creation of a web based Visualization tool that was made accessible to the about 1500 employees in a large office building. The Visualization was available for three weeks. During this period interviews, user studies and observations took place in order to evaluate what, if any, effects the Visualization had on the attitudes and behaviors in the office. Electricity use data was collected and analyzed to see if the project had a statistically significant effect on the electricity consumption in the office.The results from the interviews and the data analysis indicate that no reduction in electricity consumption took place, and a number of factors that could increase the chances of success were identified.

This study has been carried out as a part of the EC funded project, SMARTDOC IST-2000-28137, with the objective of developing application components that provide highly interactive Visualization and collaboration functionalities. The low-level components from the graphics library AVS OpenViz 2.0 are used as the development basis. The application components can be inserted into electronic documents that allow embedded controls such as web documents or Microsoft Word or PowerPoint documents. Instead of displaying results as static images, a SMARTDOC component provides the ability to visualize data and interact with it inside the document. Although the principal goal of the SMARTDOC project is to create components in a number of different application domains this study concentrates on developing a medical imaging application component in collaboration with the project partners AETmed and professor Alan Jackson at the University of Manchester.

Ever since the development of the pc and their software, in the early 80´s,architects way of work have changed a lot. Nowadays most of the architectspresent all their works digitally and not with hand drawn material, as they didbefore the pc boom.Digital visualisation technique pushes the limits, when it is about presentingarchitecture projects virtual reality.This report studies how digital Visualization technique is used among thearchitects today.Together with architects from ABAKO architect firm in Gothenburg, Sweden,interviews has been made to give answers about what they think about digitalVisualization technique. What are the opportunities, advantages- anddisadvantage with this digital technique?The answers from the architects, together with work that has been done withdigital Visualization technique in a project called Project Sofiedal, shows thatthis technique has big opportunities when it comes to create nice looking VRpresentations. The result in this report also shows that this digital technique ismore time demanding compared to hand drawn presentations.The investigation shows that digital Visualization technique is a goodcompliment when it is about showing the citizens how future projects willaffect the surrounding.

Ever since the development of the pc and their software, in the early 80´s,architects way of work have changed a lot. Nowadays most of the architectspresent all their works digitally and not with hand drawn material, as they didbefore the pc boom.Digital visualisation technique pushes the limits, when it is about presentingarchitecture projects virtual reality.This report studies how digital Visualization technique is used among thearchitects today.Together with architects from ABAKO architect firm in Gothenburg, Sweden,interviews has been made to give answers about what they think about digitalVisualization technique. What are the opportunities, advantages- anddisadvantage with this digital technique?The answers from the architects, together with work that has been done withdigital Visualization technique in a project called Project Sofiedal, shows thatthis technique has big opportunities when it comes to create nice looking VRpresentations. The result in this report also shows that this digital technique ismore time demanding compared to hand drawn presentations.The investigation shows that digital Visualization technique is a goodcompliment when it is about showing the citizens how future projects willaffect the surrounding.

The Functional Resonance Accident Model is a method developed to analyze complex systems for the purpose of accident prevention. In FRAM-analysis a Visualization of the complex system is created as an aid for identifying points of interaction in the system where the risk of accidents is high, and to determine where preventive measures are to be placed. FRAM Visualizer is a computer program developed as a tool for creating such Visualizations.Many usability problems have been identified in FRAM Visualizations created both manually according to established method and by using the FRAM Visualizer software. The purpose of this paper is to give a basis for how FRAM Visualizations can be improved in accordance with usability criteria for use in future qualitative studies.The author suggests alterations to the FRAM Visualization to resolve usability issues identified in previous articles and to achieve usability goals derived from visual communication theory. The design process is guided by established design principles.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how semantic relations in a document collection can be visualized with a Kohonen self-organizing map. It can be seen as a map of the information space which can be used to support information retrieval. The study makes a comparison of the possible differences between a map that is based on morphologically unprocessed text and a map where the text has been lemmatized. The text that is being processed is the definitions of all the existing instances in WordNet of a random selection of indexing terms from the Times-collection. The purpose is to see if morphological processing somehow can show different semantic connections between term instances based on their definitions.

The social community is structured around data, a lot of that data is stored in different types of databases. The meaning of this essay is to develop an interactive tool that will change the way database Visualization is done, and also to research in which fields a tool of this type can be used. With the help of different methods we discovered areas where it could be of use, such as; presentation of a database, development and documentation of a database. The primary goal of the prototype was to make viewing of database structures easier, even people without prior database knowledge should be able to understand the structure. During the development we used prototypes.

Today it becomes more and more important to work with continuous improvements to stay ahead of the competitors. Pfizer in Strängsäs started working with continuous improvements in 2010. By the end of 2012, the company?s goal is to reach 24 improvements per employee at the factory.Their project has two main purposes; to examine the need and possibilities for Visualization regarding continuous improvements at the production department and to develop a concept for visualisation of the entire factory?s continuous improvements.To attain the information required to examine the needs at the production department, interviews with relevant employees at the department were conducted. Using interviews as a benchmarking instrument was also helpful in getting different points of views.

The purpose of this master thesis was to explore and develop prototypes for Visualization of trade statistics in a market surveilance application. In such an anapplication a large amount of information is processed. This information is then summarized and presented to the market surveillance staff. The practical part of this thesis was done at Scila AB in Stockholm. Three prototypes were developed based on modern Visualization methods.

Workplace accidents in Sweden have in recent years increased. Companies are at the same time putting a greater emphasis on preventing accidents and inform about safety and risks. Therefore there is a need to know how to visualize this safety information. This study is based on a part of a project proposed by the industrial company AB Wahlquists Verkstäder, in which they want to visualize their safety information for new employees and existing staff, and also for temporary contractors and apprentices. The purpose of this study is to see what is required of the Visualization of safety information and what guidelines that should be followed.

Planet rendering plays an important role in universe Visualization and geographic Visualization. The recent tools and methods allow better data acquisition, usually with very high resolution. However in computer graphics, there is always the limitation on the resolution of geometry and texture due to numerical imprecision. Not many applications can handle high resolution data effectively.This thesis introduces, Implicit Surface Scene, a level of detail scene management inspired by dynamic coordinate system and SCALEGRAPH? which change over time depending on the current camera position relative to the planet surface.