The State of the Art in Visualizing Multivariate Networks

Multivariate networks are made up of nodes and their relationships (links), but also data about those nodes and links as attributes. Most real-world networks are associated with several attributes, and many analysis tasks depend on analyzing both, relationships and attributes. Visualization of multivariate networks, however, is challenging, especially when both the topology of the network and the attributes need to be considered concurrently. In this state-of-the-art report, we analyze current practices and classify techniques along four axes: layouts, view operations, layout operations, and data operations. We also provide an analysis of tasks specific to multivariate networks and give recommendations for which technique to use in which scenario. Finally, we survey application areas and evaluation methodologies.