Experts face the task to decide where and how land reuse---transforming previously used areas into landscape and utility areas---can be performed. This decision is based on which area should be used, which restrictions exist, and which conditions have to be fulfilled for reusing this area. Information about the restrictions and the conditions is available as mostly textual, non-spatial data associated to areas overlapping the target areas. Due to the large amount of possible combinations of restrictions and conditions overlapping (partially) the target area, this decision process becomes quite tedious and cumbersome. Moreover, it proved to be useful to identify similar regions that have reached different stages of development within the data set which in turn allows determining common tasks for these regions. We support the experts in accomplishing these tasks by providing aggregated representations as well as multi-coordinated views together with category filters and selection mechanisms implemented in an interactive decision support system. Textual information is linked to these visualizations enabling the experts to justify their decisions. Evaluating our approach using a standard SUS questionnaire suggests, that especially the experts were very satisfied with the interactive decision support system.
Cognitive abilities, such as memory, learning, language, problem solving, and planning, involve the frontal lobe and other brain areas. Not much is known yet about the molecular basis of cognitive abilities, but it seems clear that cognitive abilities are determined by the interplay of many genes. One approach for analyzing the genetic networks involved in cognitive functions is to study the coexpression networks of genes with known importance for proper cognitive functions, such as genes that have been associated with cognitive disorders like intellectual disability (ID) or autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Because many of these genes are gene regulatory factors (GRFs) we aimed to provide insights into the gene regulatory networks active in the human frontal lobe. Using genome wide human frontal lobe expression data from 10 independent data sets, we first derived 10 individual coexpression networks for all GRFs including their potential target genes. We observed a high level of variability among these 10 independently derived networks, pointing out that relying on results from a single study can only provide limited biological insights. To instead focus on the most confident information from these 10 networks we developed a method for integrating such independently derived networks into a consensus network. This consensus network revealed robust GRF interactions that are conserved across the frontal lobes of different healthy human individuals. Within this network, we detected a strong central module that is enriched for 166 GRFs known to be involved in brain development and/or cognitive disorders. Interestingly, several hubs of the consensus network encode for GRFs that have not yet been associated with brain functions. Their central role in the network suggests them as excellent new candidates for playing an essential role in the regulatory network of the human frontal lobe, which should be investigated in future studies.