Improving Information Sharing and Collaborative Analysis for Remote GeoSpatial Visualization Using Mixed Reality

Remote collaboration systems allow users at different sites to perform joint tasks, which are required by many real-life applications. For example, environmental pollution is a complex problem requiring many kinds of expertise to fully understand, as pollutants disperse not only locally but also regionally or even globally. This paper presents a remote collaborative visualization system through providing co-presence, information sharing, and collaborative analysis functions based on mixed reality techniques. We start with developing an immersive visualization approach for analyzing multi-attribute and geo-spatial data with intuitive multi-model interactions, simulating co-located collaboration effects. We then go beyond by designing a set of information sharing and collaborative analysis functions to support different users to share and analyze their sensemaking processes collaboratively. We provide example results and usage scenario to demonstrate that our system enables users to perform a variety of immersive and collaborative analytics tasks effectively. Through two small user studies focusing on evaluating our design of information sharing and system usability, the evaluation results confirm the effectiveness of comprehensive sharing among user, data, physical, and interaction spaces for improving remote collaborative analysis experience.