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CCP Visualisation Tools Survey.

Through the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for Support for Computational Communities between STFC and EPSRC and via the University of Manchester we have been asked to coordinate some visualisation surveys across certain disciplines. This is to inform current uses as well as indicate trends and developments for future collaboration and high impact visualisation uses. The initial surveys were completed by the end of October 2014, then evaluate the use and practicality of such a system for long term embedding into a visualisation service. Details from all users will be in this public site. Future demand and optional extra surveys are being investigated as well as a repeated annual survey to indicate temporal changes.


Motivation.

There are multiple reasons for performing this service and a key component was to understand if there was a case for a visualisation component to the SLA, and to the research councils should develop services for the CCP communities. There is also a benefit to current users who can be informed of their and other group usage to provide a better service in the future. There is a plan for long term embedding these results into a visualisation service that goes beyond a single facility.

CCPs and other Groups Surveyed

List of (and links to) the communities surveyed, response rates, and responders' locations

Methodology

Three surveys were initially issued:

  1. [SurveyMonkey Link] to the global survey of all funded networks.
  2. [SurveyMonkey Link] to the CCPi network's survey.
  3. [SurveyMonkey Link] to the CFD network's survey.

The surveys were broadly similar. Results have not been combined and presented below is the analysis of the global survey. For the global survey it was distributed via each CCP emailing list and 107 responses were received by 31 October 2014. See Presentations section below for analysis of the other two surveys.

A post six-month analysis of the surveys is underway, starting with the non-global surveys, indicating where lessons have been learnt from the respected communities.

A repeat global survey is planned to indicate change dynamics and planned to be launched exactly a year later, for Summer 2015.

Outreach Activities: Presentations and Analysis

There have been individual presentations and discussions of the surveys and post-six month evaluations have started afterwards. Pre- and some post-analysis from the two smaller surveys are available at:

  1. CCPiSurvey CCPi network survey results from June 2014
  2. CFDSurvey CFD network survey results from October 2014


The main global survey was presented first in December 2014 and the results are available at:

  1. CCPSurvey2014 CCP and related groups survey results from November 2014
  2. Future 2015 survey planned for Summer 2015

The complete presentation that was given as part of a SCD / STFC seminar in December 2014, is available as a single pdf file that includes sub-results from all three surveys [1]

Combined Report and Recommendations

ReportAndRecommendations page is a combined location for presenting current and completed survey results, as well as presenting the future roadmap.


Executive Summary of Global CCP Results

For the global survey:

  • Three packages are the most-used packages by 26% of respondents. Conversely, another 31 packages are used by one or two users and account for a further 26% of respondents.
  • Producing publication quality plots is the most-used technique.
  • However, the features making these packages the favourites are:
  1. Software that is written specifically for their domain of interest.
  2. Large datasets are handled efficiently.
  3. Scripting or other ability to extend the tool is required.
  • Users second most favoured packages are general purpose visualisation tools.
  • Users were given five options for selecting their most required development. None emerged as being more needed than the others.
  • Conversely, large amounts of memory was clearly the most important requirement for high performance visualisation.
  • The main future challenges are suggested to be
  1. The ability to handle large amounts of data
  2. The ability to operate in a distributed environment.


Summaries and analysis of the various questions' for Global CCP results

Q1 Home institutions

Q2 Which CCP(s) are you involved with?

Q3 What software do you use for visualisation of data?

Q4 What visualisation techniques are important to your work?

Q5 Comments on the respondents' most used visualisation tool.

Q6 Same as question 5, for any other tool used.

Q7 Visualisation requirements. How important do you see the provision of the following?

Q8 Requirements for high performance/advanced visualisation facilities. Do you have any need for access to:

Q9 What do you see as the main challenges for visualisation in your domain now and in the near future?

Q10 Any other comments?


Authors

Martin Turner email

Ronald Fowler email

Tim Morris email