Preface

摘要

The twenty-first century is a visual century. With the advent of Industry 4.0 or Fourth Industrial Revolution (4TR), visual informatics has become a crucial aspect of computer science. Specifically, it is a multidisciplinary field of computer science, information technology, and engineering, which integrates areas such as computer vision, image processing, pattern recognition, computer graphics, simulation, virtual reality, data visualization and analytics, cyber security as well as social computing, applied in various knowledge domains such as education, medical and health, finance, agriculture, and security. The Institute of Visual Informatics (IVI), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) - or The National University of Malaysia - is a centre of excellence (CoE) established as an outcome of the First Visual Informatics Conference (IVIC) held in 2009. The institute, which conducts research in the aforementioned basic areas, conducts master's and doctoral (PhD) degree programs by research, as well as short professional practical certifications currently in the areas of data science and visual analytics. The institute has successfully graduated five master's and 28 PhD students since its inception in 2010 through 2017. We are indeed indebted to the international fraternity from the last four IVIC conferences (2009, 2011, 2013, and 2015), who have given us support that has resulted in the establishment of the institute. Our smart partnerships, through this conference, will not only help the institute to grow but will enhance research in this area internationally that can be applied by private organizations and governments in the respective countries.