[CLOSED] Call for Papers: Special Issue on Fighting Pandemics with Computer Graphics and Applications

Submissions due: 15 June 2022

Publication: January/February 2023

When pandemics strike societies, they can destroy critical infrastructures, such as healthcare and economic systems. When COVID-19 struck the planet, many technological research developments were proposed, some of them even leading to tools for citizens or governments, with the objective of supporting this complicated period for the entire planet. The vague knowledge available at the time made it difficult to develop computer graphics applications that could be robust and reliable enough to be used as a tool to fight the spread of the pandemic.

The adoption and development of new algorithms to simulate, visualize, and predict scenarios during the pandemic became a reality. Many research groups in universities and companies pursued the objective of proposing alternatives that would help people during such a challenging period. Many of those alternatives involved solutions containing visualizations, animations, and interactions--in short, processing and generating graphic data. These all have great value to society and should be adequately documented for the future. For instance, the large amount of data gathered and stored during the COVID-19 pandemic can be extremely helpful to build and validate models of how pandemics spread, and visualization tools can help us better understand how our behavior and routines impact the spread of a virus.

This special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications seeks high-quality articles on the use of data visualization, animation, interaction, and data science regarding the processing and generation of graphics in support of such pandemic situations. This special issue invites submissions about any pandemic, including COVID-19, but also others such as bird flu. The

predominant focus of the issue is on the use of computer graphics, visualization, virtual and augmented reality, and HCI in applications or methodologies that were or could be applied in pandemic scenarios. Topics of interest include:

• Visualization, graphic simulation, and human-computer interaction approaches
• Graphic simulation or animation used in virus-spreading scenarios
• Visualization for communicating modeling processes and decision-making dependencies
• The development of visualization tools for prediction or tracking of pandemic scenarios
• Industry and business applications in regulated environments
• VR and AR applications to visualize the impact of our behavior on the spread of a virus to raise awareness and respect for restrictions imposed by rule-makers
• Crowd simulation during a pandemic, such as capacity limitations and environment design to improve transit
• Using graphics to communicate, work, play, and interact in a socially distanced world
• Visualization of cells, pathways, and molecular structures related to viruses and bacteria

Submission Guidelines

For author information and guidelines on submission criteria, visit the Author Information page. Please submit papers through the ScholarOne system, and be sure to select the special-issue name. Manuscripts should not be published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Please submit only full papers intended for review, not abstracts, to the ScholarOne portal.

Questions?

Contact the guest editors at cga6-2022@computer.org.

Guest Editors

Soraia Raupp Musse, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Nuria Pelechano, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain