Affinity Map is an interactive network visualization tool that reveals hidden collaboration dynamics within large academic organizations. Rather than displaying a conventional organizational chart, it maps relationships between research laboratories based on shared affinities — advising, publication, and teaching — encoding collaboration strength through the visual weight of connections.
The project was developed as part of a PhD thesis at EPFL and later published as an open-access book. A live demonstration is available at rodighiero.github.io/affinity-map.
The visualization loads a JSON dataset describing nodes (laboratories or research units) and links (affinity-based relationships). A D3 force simulation positions nodes on a canvas, while arcs and chords represent the intensity of each collaboration type. Users can filter by affinity type, zoom, and pan to explore the network interactively.
The build pipeline uses Webpack and Babel, outputting to the /docs folder for GitHub Pages deployment.
The laboratory names reflect the actual structure of EPFL's ENAC school at the time the map was developed. However, the names of professors and lab members visible in the visualization are automatically generated pseudonyms — they do not correspond to real individuals. This substitution was made to protect the privacy of the people involved.
The input data.json file contains:
- affinities — a list of collaboration types, each with a name, acronym, and display order
- graph.nodes — research units with metadata and per-affinity collaboration counts
- graph.links — pairwise connections with normalized metrics and computed visual widths
This project is grounded in the following publications:
Rodighiero, Dario. 2018. "Mapping Affinities: Visualizing Academic Practice through Collaboration." PhD, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). https://doi.org/10.5075/epfl-thesis-8242.
Rodighiero, Dario, Frédéric Kaplan, and Boris Beaude. 2018. "Mapping Affinities in Academic Organizations." Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics 3 (4). https://doi.org/10.3389/frma.2018.00004.
Rodighiero, Dario. 2021. Mapping Affinities: Democratizing Data Visualization. Open-Access English edition. With Jeffrey Schnapp. Métis Presses. https://doi.org/10.37866/0563-99-9.
GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.