Framework for visual analytics of measurement data

Visual analytics is a recent research field for finding knowledge from data masses. It combines the strengths of automatic data processing, and the visual perception and analysis capabilities of the human user. This article represents a framework for analysis of measurement data with the help of visual analytics. The framework consists of a message service platform for collecting and unifying measurement data, and a visual analytics tool for analysis. The platform receives data from different types of measurement devices and transforms the data into unified format that applications can use through standard interfaces. With the visual analytics tool users can analyse the data coming from the platform. The tool shows data as interactive visualizations, both abstract and descriptive, and suggests analysis methods to the user. User performs reasoning by interpreting a series of consecutive visualizations. The framework frees the analyst from the time demanding data pre-processing and makes analysis possible without special skills and expertise in data analysis. A prototype application to demonstrate the framework is presented. Examples with real data show how explanations for building energy consumption can be reasoned with the help of the visual analytics tool.