[Infovis] VAST Challenge 2012 Call for Participation

[Cook, Kristin A]

 (Apologies if you receive multiple copies.)


VAST Challenge 2012 Call for Participation
Mini-challenge 1 data now available!  See http://www.vacommunity.org/vastchallenge2012


This year's VAST Challenge focuses on visual analytics applications for both large scale situation analysis and cyber security. There will be two mini-challenges to test your visual analytics applications and your analytical skills.

Available now:  In mini-challenge 1, (the imaginary) BankWorld's largest financial institution, the (fictitious) Bank of Money needs your best situation awareness visualizations to understand the health of its global corporate network. How do you visualize status data for a network containing nearly a million computers in a way that you can perceive network health and identify problems?

Coming soon: In mini-challenge 2, unusual events are occurring in one of the Bank of Money's regional offices. Some of them may very well wreak havoc across the institution if they turn out to be malicious. What are these unusual events? And if you were in charge of computer security, what actions should be taken to safeguard the network and quite possibly save the Bank of Money from disaster? (Participants from last year's VAST challenge may find their firewall and IDS log analysis tools useful for this challenge as well.)

We encourage participation by individuals and teams in industry and academia. Creative approaches to visual analytics are encouraged.

Please visit http://www.vacommunity.org/vastchallenge2012 for more information about the challenge and to download datasets and instructions.  Data for mini-challenge 1 is available now.  Data for mini-challenge 2 will be available soon. For more information, please contact vast_challenge at visweek.org<http://visweek.vgtc.org/visweek/2012/info/call-participation/vast_challenge@visweek.org>.

The submission deadline is July 9, 2012.

We look forward to seeing your creative solutions!

Kris Cook and Georges Grinstein, VAST Challenge Committee co-chairs