AnnotatedTimeTree, Dodeca-Rings Map & SMART: A geo-temporal analysis of criminal events

The 2014 VAST Grand Challenge required us to find victims, suspects, and criminal motivations based on three separate dataseis. We developed three VA tools (AnnotatedTimeTree, Dodeca-Ring Map and SMART) to facilitate the understanding of heterogeneous multivariate dataseis. These tools were integrated to gain insights into the source data and find connections among complex information (Fig. 1). AnnotedTimeTree aims to identify the cause clues and timeline of kidnapping based on analysis of text and network data. Dodeca-Rings Map allows analysts to interact with geospatial, temporal, and card transaction data to find suspicious personal behaviors and social networks. SMART is a visual analytics tool that enables text stream analysis by dynamically visualizing microblog data on the map over time.