Xiaoyu Wang UNC Charlotte

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Investigative Visual Analysis of Global Terrorism

• Xiaoyu Wang UNC Charlotte
• Erin Miller START Center, U. Maryland
• Kathleen Smarick START Center, U Maryland
• William Ribarsky UNC Charlotte
• Remco Chang UNC Charlotte

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Disclaimer

• Definition of Terrorism
• The threatened or actual use of illegal force
  and violence by a non-state actor to attain a
  political, economic, religious or social goal
  through fear, coercion or intimidation1,2.
• Definition of Terrorists
• Any non-state actor engaging in terrorism is
  defined to be a terrorist in the Global Terrorism
  Database (GTD).

• 1. LAFREE G., DUGAN L. Introducing the global
  terrorism database. Terrorism and Political
  Violence 19, 2 (2007), 181204.
• 2. NATIONAL CONSORTIUM FOR THE STUDY OF TERRORISM
  AND RESPONSES TO TERRORISM Global terrorism
  database. http//www.start.umd.edu/data/gtd/,
  2007

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Collaborations
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Global Terrorism Database (GTD)

• Terrorism activities throughout the world between
  1970-1997
• Contains over 60,000 incidents
• 119 dimensions for recording the events (weapons
  used, number of injuries, etc)
• Approximately 2,000 unique entities

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Visual Analysis of Terrorism

• Understanding terrorism is a grand challenge for
  the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) and the
  National Visual Analytics Consortium (NVAC).
• Other agencies such as DoD, STRATCOM, and JIPOE
  are also interested in the area.

• 1. GUO D., LIAO K., MORGAN M. Visualizing
  patterns in a global terrorism incident database.
  Environment and Planning B Planning and Design
  34, 1 (2007), 767784.

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Existing Work

• Visual Analysis of Terrorism ! Social Networks
• Social network on terrorism
• OntoVis by Shen, Ma, and Eliassi-Rad
• Social Action by Adam Perer and Schneiderman
• Geospatial approach
• Guo, Liao, and Morgan from Penn State
• GeoVista by Penn State
• Improvise by Chris Weaver
• Other Tools
• Sandbox and GeoTime by Occulus
• Why arent there more?

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Our System Design

• Big Picture
• Event-based investigative analysis
• Visually analyze the activities of entities
• Trend comparison using dimensions
• Identify trends and patterns of events
• Search-by-example of temporal patterns
• Look for similar behaviors

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Visual GTD Flow Chart
Entity Relationships (Investigative Vis)
Dimensional Relationships (ParallelSets)
Entity Analysis (Search By Example)
C. Ziemkiewicz, X. Wang, A. Godwin, W. Dou, R.
Chang, R. Kosara, and W. Ribarsky. Global
Terrorism Visualization.  Poster Presented at DHS
University Network Summit, 2008
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Visual GTD Flow Chart
Dimensional Relationships (ParallelSets)
Entity Analysis (Search By Example)
C. Ziemkiewicz, X. Wang, A. Godwin, W. Dou, R.
Chang, R. Kosara, and W. Ribarsky. Global
Terrorism Visualization.  Poster Presented at DHS
University Network Summit, 2008
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The 5 Ws

• Fundamental investigative concept
• Where a certain geo-location or region on map.
• When a spot or continues span along time line.
• Who individual entity or a group of entities
• What any physical tool or method.
• Why motivations or reasons.
• Highly interactive exploratory tool
• Flexible entrance points.
• Swift updates in coordinated views.
• Details on demand

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System Overview
WHO
WHAT
WHERE
Comparison and Shoebox
WHEN
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Where

• Designed to be easy and intuitive.
• Illustrates the activity patterns of entities.
• Multi-group selection helps in comparing
  activities of different entities.

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When

• Use of ThemeRiver to display categorical
  information.
• Understand groups temporal patterns and trends
  over time.

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Who

• Dual Roles
• Selection of entities (terrorist names tab)
• Displays selected entities (intermediate
  results tab)

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What

• Organizes categorical dimensions
• Allows for filtering of activities

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Shoebox and Comparison

• Shoebox provides a container for collecting
  entities that are under investigation
• Comparison view supports temporal comparisons
  between entities.

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Scenarios

• Scenario One
• Linking Incidents to Reveal Global Strategy
• Who -gt Where -gt When -gt What - gt
• Scenario Two
• Discovering Unexpected Temporal Patterns
• What -gt Who -gt Why

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Scenarios 1Revealing Global Strategy
This groups attacks are not bounded by
geo-locations but instead, religious beliefs.
Its attack patterns changed with its
developments.
WHY ?
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Scenario 2 Discovering Unexpected Temporal
Patterns
A geographically-bounded entity in the
Philippines.
Domestic Group
The ThemeRiver shows its rise and fall as an
entity and its modus operandi.
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Conclusion

• Contribution
• Created a comprehensive set of tools for visually
  analyzing global terrorism activities.
• Our tool models after one of the principles of
  investigation, the 5 Ws.
• Using coordinated views and high interaction to
  allow an investigator to explore the data and
  discover trends and patterns.

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Questions?
Thank you! rchang_at_uncc.edu http//viscenter.
uncc.edu
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Backup
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Visualizing Analytical Process

• Can operational or investigative processes and
  methods be modeled into an exploratory
  visualization?
• Example
• Occulus Sandbox models after the use of post-it
  notes
• Investigative GTD models the 5 Ws
• How can we integrate visual exploration with
  process modeling?
• Bank of America
• Department of Transportation

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Future works

• Support reasoning systems.
• Provide online version for mass audience.
• Combine knowledge from Social Science
  perspectives.