Building an Ontology of Visualization

Recent activity within the UK National e-Science Programme has identified a need to establish an ontology for visualization. Motivation for this includes defining web and grid services for visualization (the ‘semantic grid’), supporting collaborative work, curation, and underpinning visualization research and education. At a preliminary meeting, members of the UK visualization community identified a skeleton for the ontology. We have started to build on this by identifying how existing work might be related and utilized. We believe that the greatest challenge is reaching a consensus within the visualization community itself. This poster is intended as one step in this process, setting out the perceived needs for the ontology, and sketching initial directions. It is hoped that this will lead to debate, feedback and involvement across the community.