Entry Name: KBSI-BENJAMIN-MC1
VAST Challenge 2014
Mini-Challenge 1
Team Members:
Perakath Benjamin, Knowledge Based Systems Inc., pbenjamin@kbsi.com (PRIMARY)
Karthic Madanagopal, Knowledge Based Systems Inc., kmadanagopal@kbsi.com
Belita Gopal, Knowledge Based Systems Inc., bgopal@kbsi.com
Kannan Swaminathan, Knowledge Based Systems Inc., kswaminathan@kbsi.com
Student Team: NO
Analytic Tools Used:
Knowledge Based Systems, Inc. (KBSI) has a suite of tools that allow unstructured data to be processed, tagged, queried, analyzed and visualized. The following KBSI tools were used to support the exploration process needed by the MC1 Challenge:
- Intelligence Products Mosaic: This semantic framework supports information discovery, sense making, and presentation in a dynamic, collaborative environment. This technology reduces ‘data-to-decision’ time through the use of semantic and collaborative visual analytics techniques.
- JACKALFISH®: The JACKALFISH® tool applies ontology-assisted text mining and natural language processing methods in extracting knowledge from unstructured text sources.
- KBSI Natural Language Processing (KNLP™) pipeline: This pipeline converts unstructured natural language text into a form tagged with concepts from an ontology. During this process, named entities such as people, location, organization, etc. are also identified and tagged.
- OSR Studio™: This tool provides a query builder interface that allow users to construct query sets that can be applied to the tagged output of the KNLP™ pipeline.
- SIMILE Widget: An open source timeline widget from SIMILE Project at MIT. This tool is used to visualize temporal information on the interactive timeline. (http://www.simile-widgets.org/)
Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in
total?
120 hours
May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2014 is complete? YES
Video:
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Questions
MC1.1 – Provide a
visual representation of the structure of the Protectors of Kronos network,
with supporting evidence.
a. Who are the leaders?
b. Who is part of the extended network?
c. How has the group structure and
organization changed over time?
d. Where are the potential connections
between the POK and GAStech?
Provide
novel visualizations appropriate for communicating key information to the busy
leaders of the investigation. Please limit your response to no more than eight
images and 500 words.
The 2 historical documents about the Protectors of Kronos and the 845 articles that were provided were processed through our KNLP™ pipeline.
a. To get a list of the POK leaders, the tagged output from the KNLP™ pipeline was then queried through the OSR Studio™. Queries were constructed to search for POK and LEADERSHIP concept as shown in Figure 1. The result of this search provided an insight into who the leaders were and where the information came from (provenance), as listed below:
1.
Henk Bodrogi: Leader from 1997 - 2001 [10 year historical document
clean.docx]
2.
Elian Karel: Leader from
2001 till his death in 2009 [743.txt]
3.
Silvia Marek: from 2009 till now
[454.txt]
Figure 1: Using the OSR Studio™ to extract POK Leaders
b. The
extended network was extracted by our social network algorithm, which
internally uses the tagged named entities in all the processed documents. The
following extended connections of POK were revealed:
-
the minister of health, Cesare Nespola and POK
-
Julianna Vann and Isia
Vann
-
Michale Kraft and
Elian Karel
-
Wellness
for All (WFA) and POK.
The POK network could be viewed
through the Social Network Viewer in the Intelligence Products
Mosaic. Figure 2 shows the 3 POK
leaders, the other POK members as well as non-POK members who form part of the
extended network.
Figure 2: Extended POK Social Network in the
Intelligence Product Mosaic
c. Since
dates were also tagged by the KNLP™ pipeline, the changes
in the POK organization and network could be captured and visualized through a
Social Network Viewer linked to a Timeline Slider. Figure 3 shows the structure
of the POK organization when it was created by its 7 founding members. At that
time, Henk Bodrogi was the
first leader of the group. Figure 4 shows the network in
2001 when Elian Karel became the leader of POK when Bodrogi’s
health deteriorated. Finally, Figure 5 shows the structure
of the POK organization in 2001 when following the
unexpected death of Elian Karel, Silvia Marek took over the leadership role of
the Protectors of Kronos.
Figure 3: Founders of POK [1997 - 2000]
Figure 4: POK structure when Elian Karel was the leader [2001 - 2009]
Figure 5: POK Structure when Sylvia Marek was the leader [2009 – 2014]
d. The
GAStech network was manually created from the
organization chart and the employee records sheet. In the Intelligence Product Mosaic, the POK
network was first loaded, then the combined network button was clicked. Both
POK and GAStech networks were loaded and
automatically merged based on exact name matches. The 2 networks merged on the
node “Isia Vann”, which occurred in both networks, as
shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Potential connections between POK and GAStech
The other possible connections between
POK and GAStech could be uncovered by matching last
names of POK members. GAStech Security employees
Hennie Osvaldo, Loreto Bodrogi, Edvard
Vann and Minke Mies have
the same last names as prominent POK members. These employees could potentially
be related to these POK members, as illustrated in Figure 7.
MC1.2 – Describe the
events of January 20-21, 2014. What is the timeline of events? Please limit
your response to no more than ten images and 500 words.
Events are also tagged by the KNLP™ pipeline since the
underlying ontology being used contains events. By querying the data by date,
events and named entities, the list of events was obtained in chronological
order for January 20-21, 2014. The SIMILE timeline widget inside Intelligence
Product Mosaic is used to visualize the events.
Events of January 20, 2014
At 10:15 am, a fire alarm went off at GAStech headquarters. There was no sign of the CEO or his executive staff. A helicopter took off from the roof of the building. People began speculating that the evacuation was due to a bomb threat. At 10:30 am, Abila fire department arrived at the scene.
Petrus Gerhard, who had blogged several articles about POK, initially reported that Sten Sanjorge arrived at the capitol building at 10:52am. However, at 12:25 pm, it was reported that none of the executives had arrived at the reception. At 12:30 a plane took off with 7-8 “business type” persons aboard. The passengers apparently appeared to be in a celebratory mood giving rise to speculation that GAStech employees had fled Kronos with their fortunes. At 12:50 pm, police arrived at GAStech HQ and set up a perimeter. The above events are shown in the SIMILE timeline shown in Figure 7.
For one hour, media placed several calls to GAStech without much success. At 2:10, a government sedan dropped off a man in a suit at the HQ. At 2:30pm, the second plane carrying seven or eight “business types” took off. The police began to leave the GAStech building around 3:00 pm. At 3:20pm, news media reported that the plane contained executives from another company and not employees of GAStech. The Kronos Police interrogated Edvard Vann and released him two hours later. At 6:00 pm news media reported that the jet carrying Sten Sanjorge and six employees had arrived in Tethys. Six executives, who are thought to be experts in emergency management, flew back to Abila. These afternoon events are shown in Figure 8.
Figure 9 and Figure 10 show the events during the night of Jan 20, 2014. At 7:35pm the police reported that several GAStech employees were missing and that they were still believed to be in Kronos. At 8:00pm the President of Kronos was moved to a secure location. At 11:55 pm the fire chief of Abila announced that it was a false alarm.
Figure 7: Morning events of Jan 20, 2014
[10:00 AM – 2:00 PM]
Figure 8: Afternoon events of Jan 20, 2014 [2:00 PM – 6:00 PM]
Figure 9: Night events of Jan 20, 2014 [6:00 PM – 10:00 PM]
Figure 10: Late night events of Jan 20, 2014 [10:00 PM – 11:59 PM]
Events of January 21, 2014
It was reported that the GAStech employees who flew back from Tethys the previous night, went directly to the Abila police. During a news conference, the Abila Police Department indicated that they were working with government officials from Tethys. At 10:00 am, GAStech scheduled a news conference to announce that its CEO was not among the missing. At 11:45 am readers were alerted that Petrus Gerhard would soon be making an important announcement. Fifteen minutes later Petrus Gerhard announced that POK had claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and demanded a $20 million ransom.
Figure 11: Morning events of Jan 21, 2014 [7:00 AM – 11:00 AM]
Figure 12: Afternoon events of Jan 21, 2014 [11:00 AM – 4:00 PM]
MC1.3 – Identify at
least two possible explanations why the GAStech
employees may be missing. What evidence do you have to support each of these
explanations? Please limit your response to no more than three additional
images and 200 words.
Hypothesis-1: POK is responsible for kidnappings.
POK sees GAStech as a corrupt, foreign-corporation that is destroying natural resources of Kronos. When GAStech executives were richly rewarded from a recent IPO, POK decided to attack. Isia Vann, a known radical POK member has been with GAStech’s security since 2007. In the last two years, four more people joined GAStech’ security – all four share last names with known POK members. Thus, POK infiltrated GAStech’s security, accessed inside information, and successfully carried out the attack. Figure 7 shows the GAStech Security Department and its possible connections with the POK.
Figure 13: GAStech Security Department – Connections with POK
Hypothesis-2: GAStech staged the
kidnapping and framed POK.
GAStech’s profitability has been on the decline due to steep rise in production costs [457.txt]. With its tax breaks expiring in 2013 [755.txt], GAStech may be planning to exit Kronos and start investing in Norway and North America [150.txt, 336.txt, 457.txt]. Also, two private jets with GAStech executives left Abila on Jan 20th [718.txt, 721.txt, 633.txt]. POK doesn’t have access to private jets. GAStech likely staged the kidnappings, blamed it on POK and possibly use the incident as an excuse to shut-down operations in Kronos. Figure 8 shows a screenshot of the OSR Studio™ Query Window which was used to identify GASTech’s business trend.
Figure 14: OSR Studio™ Query Window – Identify GASTech’s Business Trend.