Easi²Vis: User-Centered Scientific Visualization for the World Wide Web

This paper presents the concepts and realization of the Easi²Vis system which incorporates user modeling in a Web-based on-demand scientific visualization service. Using the latest Web technologies, the user can requset very individual images or animations which will beproduced exclusively for him/her on the fly by a a graphics server. By means of a user database, automatic user detection, and automatic detection of client properties, the system can offer hypertext documents and WWW applications that are specifically configured for eachindividual user. User preferences are stored and utilized to achieve this goal Thus, powerful and flexible visualization capabilities are available to every user in the Internet regardless of his/her personal hardware and software situation. Each user - lay person or expert - isable to adjust the visualization service to his/her specific needs. We call this approach the Easi²Vis (Everyone's Access to Sophisticated Individual Internet-based VISualizations ) system, in which the WWW is used as a user-centered interface for accessing applications. The concepts of this approach are presented in this paper Easi²Vis was applied to a personal Web-based visualization service for meteorological data. Results of this work are also discussed.