You've asked us for "big data" challenges in the past; so we're giving you big data to work on. This year’s VAST Challenge focuses on visual analytics applications for both large scale situation analysis and cyber security. We have two mini-challenges to test your analytical skills and confound your visual analytics applications.

In the first mini-challenge, (the imaginary) BankWorld's largest financial institution, the (fictitious) Bank of Money needs your best situation awareness visualizations to understand the health of its global corporate network. But how do you visualize data out of a network containing nearly a million computers in a way that you can perceive its state and identify problems?

In the second mini-challenge, unusual events are occurring in one of the Bank of Money's regional offices. Some of them may very well wreak havoc across the institution if they turn out to be malicious. What are these unusual events? And if you were in charge of computer security, what actions should be taken to safeguard the network and quite possibly save the Bank of Money from disaster? (Participants from last year's VAST challenge may find their firewall and IDS log analysis tools useful for this challenge as well!)

Please visit http://www.vacommunity.org/vastchallenge2012 for more information about the challenge and to download datasets and instructions. Data for BOTH mini-challenges is available now. For more information, please contact vast_challenge@visweek.org

DEADLINE AND NOTIFICATION

Deadline: July 9, 2012
Notification: August 10, 2012

We encourage participation by individuals and teams in industry and academia. Creative approaches to visual analytics are encouraged.

CONTEST CHAIRS

Kris Cook, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Georges Grinstein, University of Massachusetts-Lowell
Mark Whiting, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory