InfraVis

About the project

The funding of InfraVis is part of VR, the Swedish Research Council's call "Contribution to research infrastructure of national interest in 2021". InfraVis is an open research infrastructure that includes infrastructures with complementary expertise and will give researchers in Sweden the opportunity to get help with analyzing and visualizing data, which will promote Swedish research in all areas. InfraVis can be used both as an input to various resources to solve simpler problems and issues but will also offer support at a more advanced level, which also includes software development. InfraVis will have strong connections to and collaborations with other local, national, and international research infrastructures. For example, SNIC users, researchers at MAX IV, CERN researchers and initiatives from the life sciences and digital humanities will be able to benefit from access to visualization expertise.

InfraVis will help Sweden's researchers visualise scientific data

InfraVis is led by the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers. Nine higher education institutions are included in the collaboration: Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Linnaeus University, Lund University, Mid Sweden University, Umeå University and Uppsala University. 

Today, the latest technology in data visualization is available at several universities in Sweden, but for the individual researcher it can be difficult to get started as a user as the technology requires expertise, time and resources. InfraVis will be able to remedy this by creating a common gateway to the advanced technologies in combination with competence-enhancing initiatives for researchers around the country. 

InfraVis thus meets a growing need and Monica Billger, main applicant and Professor of Architecture and Visualization at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers, expects users from a wide range of disciplines such as humanities, medicine, and technology, already during the first year.  

   – Data analysis is an increasingly important part of the researchers' workflow, but also a challenge as it can involve very large and complex amounts of data. Here, visualization can come in as an important tool for activating our ability to recognize patterns and detect trends, says Monica Billger. 

In addition to support researchers, InfraVis experts around the country will be strengthened themselves through collaboration. Local resources will also be given the opportunity for further development in a sustainable structure. Anders Ynnerman, Professor of Visualization at Linköping University, which is one of the collaborators, states that “the investment in InfraVis confirms Sweden's strong position in visualization research in the world and gathers the country's experts to offer Swedish researchers unique opportunities for advanced visual data analysis. Anders Ynnerman think InfraVis is an example of a new generation of infrastructures that includes both hardware and software, but above all also human expertise. 

   – The management of an infrastructure with nine different universities as partners requires good cooperation, which the InfraVis consortium already have established as the decision to fund the national infrastructure has been preceded by careful planning and close cooperation between the host university Chalmers and the other partner universities, states Monica Billger. 

The collaborating parties are Chalmers University of Technology, University of Gothenburg, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Linköping University, Linnaeus University, Lund University, Mid Sweden University, Umeå University and Uppsala University.