An Incremental Layout Method for Visualizing Online Dynamic Graphs

Graphs provide a visual means for examining relation data and force-directed methods are often used to lay out graphs for viewing. Making sense of a dynamic graph as it evolves over time is challenging, and previous force-directed methods were designed for static graphs. In this paper, we present an incremental version of a multilevel multi-pole layout method with a refinement scheme incorporated, which enables us to visualize online dynamic networks while maintaining a mental map of the graph structure. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method and compare it to previous methods using several network data sets