Geospatial Laboratory Visualization : Geospatial Laboratory Visualization

Abstract: Thermo Fisher Scientific (TFS) has a lot of customer laboratory data that they wished to utilize in two visualizations. The main problem this thesis takes on is how to visualize the location, live status, and other laboratory data for over a thousand laboratories in an easy to comprehend visualization. The first step was creating a geocoding application to retrieve geographic coordinates for all laboratories. Related visualization projects with a geographic component were researched. Based on the research, three visualization prototypes were created with different libraries.Prototype evaluation and library limitations helped determine which prototypes to pursue further. The main visualization is a web-based, interactive three-dimensional globe createdwith the CesiumJS library. Multiple visualization clients can be supported simultaneously by a server application. An interactive two-dimensional map was created with the Google Maps API and was integrated into the production version ofTFS' LabCommunity software. Feedback from the final presentations showed that the main visualization provides a good overview of the laboratories. However, it also showed that it could be difficult to process the information in areas with many geographically close laboratories. Future work could be spent on methods to disseminate the laboratory information in these areas.