BLIZAAR is an international collaborative project (PRCI) proposal which fits in the "Information and Communication Society" challenge. It involves French and Luxembourgish partners working in collaboration to craft novel ways of exploring and analyzing dynamic multilayer networks. Our main application domain is digital cultural heritage with CVCE (Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe). It concerns the collection, preservation, analysis and provision of open access to digitized cultural heritage objects, which may be any man-made object throughout history. In recent years, large amounts of digitized materials have for the first time become freely available to the public and scholars. The range of digital material covers many events and entity types, such political figures and institutions, which can be linked by many different relationship types that change over time. Domain experts often need to inspect various types of information from multiple perspectives to better analyze and grasp complex mechanisms. Our second application domain is life sciences in partnership with researchers from the environmental research and innovation department at LIST (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology). In recent years, the improvement in quality of practical experimental techniques has produced vast amounts of biological datasets representing many entities, such as genetic material, proteins and metabolites frequently modeled as multi-level networks. Biological systems are very complex and the levels rarely work in isolation. The experiences and problems in both application domains offer exciting new challenges and opportunities for the development of novel visual analytics (VA) solutions to provide useful tools to experts in each application domain. Overall, existing VA approaches are limited and cannot be directly used to model complex real-world systems and fully capture their intricacy. Moreover, current visualizations of dynamic and multilayer networks do not convey temporal changes effectively. Thus, new interactive representations need to be investigated to better understand how such (potentially large-scale) networks are structured and evolve over time. The challenges are on the one hand that these networks may model complex phenomena involving multiple dimensions, which makes the analysis and tracking of changes difficult. On the other hand, although there are many ways to represent networks, experts still may not be sure which technique should be used in a given context. Our first objective is to contribute novel graph visualizations that support the analysis and comprehension of dynamic multilayer network datasets. An important part of this objective is to build a clear understanding of the specific types of tasks that are applicable to multilayer network datasets. These tasks will need to be validated with end users and our novel visualizations evaluated in user studies. A second objective is to craft novel and interactive representations of dynamic and multilayer networks, by designing and combining visualizations. We will adopt an iterative process, mapping the problems of application domain expert users to multilayer dynamic network abstractions, then to interactive visualizations steered by domain experts. The proposal thus aims at expanding the state of the art on dynamic and multilayer network visualizations, by exploring, designing and evaluating new ways of representing these types of networks. We will contribute to (1) exploring and classifying visualizations of dynamic and multilayer networks including hybrid approaches, (2) designing novel interactive prototypes to explore some of these visualizations, and (3) evaluating these approaches in practice using case studies and user evaluations in the domains of digital cultural heritage and life sciences.

CROSSCULT aims to make reflective history a reality in the European cultural context, by enabling the re-interpretation of European (hi)stories through cross-border interconnections among cultural digital resources, citizen viewpoints and physical venues. The project has two main goals. The first goal is to lower cultural EU barriers and create unique cross-border perspectives, by connecting existing digital historical resources and by creating new ones through the participation of the public. The second goal is to provide long-lasting experiences of social learning and entertainment that will help towards the better understanding and re-interpretation of European history. To achieve these goals, CROSSCULT will use cutting-edge technology to connect existing digital cultural assets and to combine them with interactive experiences that all together are intended to increase retention, stimulate reflection and help European citizens appreciate their past and present in a holistic manner. CROSSCULT will be implemented on 4 real-world flagship pilots involving a total of 8 sites across Europe. It will be realized through the participation of 11 partners and 14 associate partners including computer scientists, social sciences and humanity researchers, historians and private companies, from 7 European countries. The project will ensure continuous stakeholder involvement through a Living Lab and it will be supported by a concrete business plan. CROSSCULT is directly related to the work program since, on the one hand it re-purposes the use of digital cultural assets to stimulate a new shared culture of European history, one that moves from silos to unification, and on the other hand it boosts the development of new businesses that exploit the rich European digital cultural heritage.