Effectiveness of visual analytics in supporting the reasoning on Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (poster)

In the last years, a huge effort has been devoted to the improvement of simulation tools for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). However, one gap still needs to be filled: tools supporting the precise comprehension of the achieved numerical results, are not available yet; in fact, simulation platforms usually lead to quantitative figures which can be investigated only by statistics. Conversely, the simulation outputs are huge and depend on several aspects - such as mobility and position-dependent phenomena; consequently, they are particularly difficult to be comprehensively understood. While this aspect may seem negligible, it can strongly hamper the usability of the results. It is then envisioned the possibility to boost the analysis of network simulations by means of interactive tools. VisMagna is a visualization tool, specifically meant to support the understanding of complex VANET scenarios. The paper introduces it and shows it at work, highlighting the deeper understanding enabled by it.