Perspective Chapter: EnsembleDashVis Views and Volunteers – A Retrospective and Early History

Abstract

This paper offers a retrospective history of the early development stages of EnsembleDashVis, a visualization dashboard specifically crafted to support modelers in interpreting a simulation model utilized to forecast COVID-19 trends. The volunteer effort behind this dashboard was collaboratively contributed with the Scottish COVID-19 Response Consortium (SCRC), with the objective of enabling an enhanced comprehension of the complex dynamics of the pandemic through modeling of COVID-19 data collected by NHS Scotland during the first wave of the outbreak. This retrospective chronicles the design and development journey of the system, guided by feedback from domain experts, all taking place amidst the exceptional circumstances of an unprecedented pandemic. The outcome of this volunteer work is a streamlined relationship discovery process between sets of simulation input parameters and their respective outcomes, which leverages the power of information visualization and visual analytics (VIS). We hope that this retrospective will serve as an insightful resource for future effort, in VIS for pandemic and emergency responses and promote mutually beneficial engagement between scientific communities.