Time series forecasting has been performed for decades in both science and industry. The forecasting models have evolved steadily over time. Statistical methods have been used for many years and were later complemented by neural network approaches. Currently, hybrid approaches are increasingly presented, aiming to combine both methods’ advantages. These hybrid forecasting methods could lead to more accurate predictions and enhance and improve visual analytics systems for making decisions or for supporting the decision-making process. In this work, we conducted a systematic literature review using the PRISMA methodology and investigated various hybrid forecasting approaches in detail. The exact procedure for searching and filtering and the databases in which we performed the search were documented and supplemented by a PRISMA flow chart. From a total of 1435 results, we included 21 works in this review through various filtering steps and exclusion criteria. We examined these works in detail and collected the quality of the prediction results. We summarized the error values in a table to investigate whether hybrid forecasting approaches deliver better results. We concluded that all investigated hybrid forecasting methods perform better than individual ones. Based on the results of the PRISMA study, the possible applications of hybrid prediction approaches in visual analytics systems for decision making are discussed and illustrated using an exemplary visualization.

Studies have shown that although having more information improves the quality of decision-making, information overload causes adverse effects on decision quality. Visual analytics and recommendation systems counter this adverse effect on decision-making. Accurately identifying relevant information can reduce the noise during exploration and improve decision-making. These countermeasures also help scientists make correct decisions during research. We present a novel and intuitive approach that supports real-time collaboration. In this paper, we instantiate our approach to scientific writing and propose a system that supports scientists. The proposed system analyzes text as it is being written and recommends similar publications based on the written text through similarity algorithms. By analyzing text as it is being written, it is possible to provide targeted real-time recommendations to improve decision-making during research by finding relevant publications that might not have been otherwise found in the initial research phase. This approach allows the recommendations to evolve throughout the writing process, as recommendations begin on a paragraph-based level and progress throughout the entire written text. This approach yields various possible use cases discussed in our work. Furthermore, the recommendations are presented in a visual analytics system to further improve scientists’ decision-making capabilities.

In everyday outpatient care, office-based medical professionals often face a growing volume of patient records, spanning years or even decades, while consultation times remain critically short. Much of this information is embedded in unstructured documents such as physician letters, lab reports, and diagnostic notes. The lack of time makes it difficult for physicians to comprehend the patients’ medical history and to base decisions on the full health and disease history. This paper presents a modular Visual Analytics approach particularly designed to support general practitioners in navigating long-term patient histories. Using transformer-based large language models, the system automatically extracts and classifies relevant clinical entities from unstructured documents. These extracted elements are mapped to a set of predefined data categories and visualized through tailored, interactive components, such as medication intake timelines, blood count diagrams, and named-entity highlighted texts. Visual components are selected dynamically based on content type and clinical relevance, allowing medical professionals to explore patient histories efficiently and to identify critical information at a glance. The modular architecture facilitates integrating new document types and visual modules, ensuring flexibility and scalability. Designed for real-world applicability, the system aims to reduce cognitive load, improve information accessibility, and support time-sensitive decision-making in primary care.

The benefits of ideation for both industry and academia alike have been outlined by countless studies, leading to research into various approaches attempting to add new ideation methods or examine how the quality of the ideas and solutions created can be measured. Although AI-based approaches are being researched, there is no attempt to provide the ideation participants with information that inspire new ideas and solutions in real time. Our proposal presents a novel and intuitive approach that supports users in real time by providing them with relevant information as they conduct ideation. By analyzing their ideas within the respective ideation sessions, our approach recommends items of interest with high contextual similarity to the proposed ideas, allowing users to skim through, for example, publications and inspire new ideas quickly. The recommendations also evolve in real time. As more ideas are written during the ideation session, the recommendations become more precise. This real-time approach is instantiated with various ideation methods as a proof of concept, and various models are evaluated and compared to identify the best model for working with ideas.

Corporate Foresight is a strategic planning process that helps organizations anticipate and prepare for future trends and developments that may impact their operations. It involves analyzing data, identifying potential scenarios, and creating strategies to address them to ensure long-term success and sustainability. Visual Analytics approaches have been introduced to cover parts of the Corporate Foresight process. These concepts present different approaches to integrate machine learning methods and artificial intelligence with interactive visualizations to solve tasks such as identifying emerging trends. A holistic concept for synthesizing Visual Analytics with Corporate Foresight does not exist yet. We propose in this work a holistic Visual Analytics approach that covers the main aspects of Corporate Foresight by including strategic management and considers different organizational forms. Our model goes beyond the state-of-the-art by providing, besides foresight also, hindsight and insight. Our main contributions are the revised Visual Analytics model and its proof of concept through implementation as a web-based system with real data.