Treemap Visualization for Space Situational Awareness

Abstract

Making sense of massive data sets is a problem for many military domains including space. With unwieldy big data sets used for space situational awareness (SSA), important trends and outliers may not be easy to spot especially not at-a-glance. One method being explored to visualize SSA data sets is called treemapping. Treemaps fill screen space with nested rectangles (tiles) of various sizes and colors to represent multiple dimensions of hierarchical data sets. By mapping these dimensions effectively with a tiling algorithm that maintains an appropriate aspect ratio, patterns can emerge that often would have gone unnoticed. The ability to interactively perform range filtering (in our case with sliders) and object drill-downs (hyperlinking the tiles) make this technology powerful for in-depth analyses in addition to at-a-glance awareness. For one SSA analysis, the tiles could represent satellites that are grouped by country, sized by apogee, and colored/shaded by the launch date. Filter sliders could allow apogee range or launch dates to be narrowed for better resolution of a smaller data set. The application of this technology for the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) Mission System (JMS) is being explored on a DARPA Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) effort as a plug-in to the existing User-Defined Operational Picture (UDOP). In addition, visualization of DARPA Orbit Outlook small telescope data will be demonstrated. This research will investigate what SSA analyses are best served by treemaps, the best tiling algorithms for these problems, and how the treemaps should be integrated into the existing JMS UDOP workflow. Finally, we introduce a variation of treemaps that help leaders allocate their time to tasks based on importance and urgency.

Open PDF

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Oct 18, 2015
Accession Number
AD1001969

Entities

People

  • John D. Iani
  • Zac Gorrell

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Big Data
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Data Sets
  • Digital Data
  • Filters
  • Situational Awareness
  • Space Debris
  • Space Objects
  • Space Operations
  • Space Situational Awareness
  • Space Surveillance
  • Space Weather
  • United States
  • Visualizations

Readers

  • Adaptive Control and Estimation with Uncertainty in Dynamic Systems.
  • Aerospace Engineering.
  • Database Systems and Applications

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Satellites
  • Space - Space Objects