StreamEB: Stream edge bundling

Abstract

Graph streams have been studied extensively, such as for data mining, while fairly limitedly for visualizations. Recently, edge bundling promises to reduce visual clutter in large graph visualizations, though mainly focusing on static graphs. This paper presents a new framework, namely StreamEB, for edge bundling of graph streams, which integrates temporal, neighbourhood, data-driven and spatial compatibility for edges. Amongst these metrics, temporal and neighbourhood compatibility are introduced for the first time. We then present force-directed and tree-based methods for stream edge bundling. The effectiveness of our framework is then demonstrated using US flights data and Thompson-Reuters stock data. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.