LIVE lets anyone build
"Linkable Interactive Visualization and Exploration" Environments.

LIVE is free, open-source, and helps with shared data and visualization challenges across astronomy (LIVE Astro), biology (LIVE Bio) and GIS (LIVE GIS).

LIVE is not just infrastructure—it is the foundation of an emerging open-source ecosystem. LIVE collaborators are building out science demonstration projects to refine and ensure the platform's utility, extensibility, and long-term sustainability. 

LIVE is focused on bringing high-powered data exploration to the browser, in flavors ranging from simple tools intended for learners or single-purpose tasks to hybrid command-line/GUI interfaces built on Jupyter tools. It is distinguished from commercially available tools by its ability to handle many data formats (e.g., high-resolution/large images, data cubes) not commonly used in the business world, by its ability to connect extant JavaScript tools to each other, and by its open-source nature. 

Combining the glue linked-view visualization system with Jupyter and Solara frameworks, LIVE is integrating tools from across the open-source community, providing support for diverse data formats, plot styles, and analysis methods all within a single ecosystem of connected tools.

Have a look at the Capabilities and Tech pages to learn more about what's happening, and at the team page to see who's behind this. "Learn More" offers explanatory talks and information about support. 

Please do drop us a note if you'd like to join in! 

LIVE is customizable. LIVE Astro, LIVE Bio, and LIVE GIS already support a wide range of data formats and can connect diverse datasets—but thanks to LIVE’s plug-in architecture, you can add new formats as needed. Likewise, the LIVE suite includes a rich set of plots, visualizations, and analysis tools that may cover everything you need. If not, you’re free to create your own plug-ins—or simply drop down to the command line, which is always available for code-savvy users.

LIVE is not a(nother) "business intelligence" or "big data analytics" platform, even though it does offer data integration and interactive graphics, including dashboards.   Excellent products like Google's Looker Studio, Domo, Microsoft PowerBI, and Tableau all offer much of the functionality LIVE seeks to provide--but primarily for tabular data and geographic maps. Amazingly powerful data integration platforms like Palantir Foundry can assemble vast data resources in seconds, but those resources cannot be analyzed or visualized within a flexible, format-agnostic, open-source suite of tools. 

In the future, the LIVE team would love to connect our system to several of these commercial tools, as they become increasingly useful ways for scientists to interact with cloud-based resources.

All of the component parts of LIVE already exist, and funding is being sought to build out the full LIVE Environments ecosystem.