Entry Name: "TJU-Cai-MC1"

VAST Challenge 2014
Mini-Challenge 1

Team Members:

Zhuang Cai, Tianjin University, China, caizhuang16@gmail.com PRIMARY

Mengyao Chen, Tianjin University, China, chenmy@tju.edu.cn

Hanqing Zhao, Tianjin University, China, hanqingzh@tju.edu.cn

Ying Zhao, Central South University, China, Zhaoying511@gmail.com

Fangfang Zhou, Central South University, China, zhouffang@gmail.com SUPERVISOR

Kang Zhang, Tianjin University, China, kzhang@tju.edu.cn SUPERVISOR

Student Team: YES

Analytic Tools Used:

D3

MYSQL

Excel

Visio

Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in total?

About 180 hours (60 days and 3 hours per day)

May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2014 is complete?

YES

Video:

index.files\TJU-Cai-MC1-Demo.wmv

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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.

In more than 10 years, POK has evolved from a grassroot social movement organization consisting of dozens of people to a terrorist organization which can call for hundreds of thousands of people. We will describe the great change and status of POK from the following 4 aspects.

a. The five leaders of POK

Historically, POK had 5 key leaders, who could be roughly divided into three generations. As shown in Fig. 1-1, on the left, the 5 key leaders are Henk Bodrogi, Carmine Osvaldo, Elian Karel, Silvia Marek and Mandor Vann. The figure shows the relationships between them and the cause of their power transfer. Considering the current scale and violence of POK, we speculate that public leader Silvia Marek and behind the scene leader Mandor Vann were co-managing POK. The right part of Fig.1-1 shows some evidences related to the analysis of leadership discovered through our visualization.

Fig.1-1 Summary of three generations of five leaders and relevant evidence.

b. The extended network of POK

At present, many people or organizations had become part of the extended network of POK. We group these people and organizations according to their social attributes, summarized in Fig. 1-2. In the process of searching for the extended network, email analysis, articles analysis and personal analysis all play a very important role. Fig. 1-3 explains how we find an association between POK and the extended network through visual analysis. Fig. 1-3(a) presents abnormal emails about APA from journal of ARISE. Therefore, the sender and recipients of this email were suspicious. Fig. 1-3(b) and Fig. 1-3(c) show the relationship between POK and Homeland Illumination (inc. its correspondent Petrus Gerhard). Fig.1-3(d) shows abnormal emails between Linnea Bergen (the leader of IT Department of GASTech) and suspects.

Fig.1-2 Extended network with POK and categories.

Fig.1-3 Extended network with POK and relevant evidence

c. The evolution of organizational structure

Initially, POK was a grassroot social movement organization fighting for its own rights and interests. But after absorbing more young people with no work and education, POK has evolved into a terrorist group which is organized in a hierarchy. The organization has thousands of members. All the staff formed a typical pyramid structure divided into two parts, peaceful and violent. Two parts were led by different people and performed different tasks, as shown in Fig. 1-4. The left part of Fig.1-4 shows the evolvement of the organization structure, the middle and right parts show the cause of this evolvement and evidences found from our visualization.

Fig.1-4 The changing status of the POK structure and relevant evidence.

d. The potential connection between POK and GASTech

Some members of POK, such as Isia Vann and Ruscellla Mies Haber, had lurked in GASTech for many years. Haber may be Mies’s widow in POK. In 2013, a number of members who had the same family name with the founders of POK entered GASTech. Some members of the Facilities, IT and Engineering Departments also had potential connections with POK members because of their partnerships in army, support for environmental movements, money relationships, love relationships or common goals. Fig. 1-5 summarizes the potential connections and the related figures’ priorities for investigation.

Fig.1-5 Summary of potential connections.

Fig.1-6 Evidences of the potential connections from individual information.

Fig.1-7 Evidences of the potential connections from emails.

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.

January 20-21 are two eventful days, full of conflicting reports and confusing information. In Abila, many events occurred around the disappearance of employees. Information of these events mainly came from three major medias Homeland Illumination, Kronos Star and The Abila Post, each having its own standpoint and bias. Media bias led to misleading reports. Therefore, in the analysis, understanding the media bias is essential for finding what the truth is. In Figure1-3(c), the RadVis shows the cluster and bias of media using key words, reflecting reporting tendency.

Next, we analyze the events of Jan 20 and 21 from six different aspects.

a. We believe that in many news reports, the two press conferences were important watersheds. The 34 events in January 20 are divided into three stages. Figures 2-1, 2-2 and 2-3 depict the flow of events in these 3 stages and their relationships.

Fig.2-1 The timeline of Stage 1.

Fig.2-2 The timeline of Stage 2.

Fig.2-3 The timeline of Stage 3.

b. Seven public announcements by 5 organizations largely oriented the public opinions on January 20 and 21. Fig. 2-4 shows the special subjects of important events and information in visualization. The timeline at the top shows these 7 announcements and their corresponding release organizations, spokesmen, and contents. The corresponding scatterplot shows the media’s responses to the public events.

Fig.2-4 Seven important public announcements.

c. The events related to the air transportation are important but uncertain. We summarize and visualize the events. Fig. 2-5 shows the timeline of related jets which took-off and landed in Abila Airport. The blue bubbles Fig.2-5 shows reports related to these jets.

Fig.2-5 Events and reports on the four jets.

d. Fig. 2-6 shows the information provided by staff in the first crime scene. Much of the information is about the people in black who appeared in the celebration. Furthermore, staff also talked about other interesting events.

Fig.2-6 Summary of the information provided by employees.

e. However, some hidden but potentially important events also occurred alongside the public events. Fig. 2-7 summarizes these possibly hidden events, related reasoning and evidences.

Fig.2-7 Hidden events and relevant evidences.

f. Finally, in Fig. 2-8, we summarize three main story lines, i.e. CEO storyline, public storyline, and missing storyline.

Fig.2-8 Summary of the three storylines.

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.

Given various types of conflicting findings and evidences, we derived the following two reasonable conclusions:

Conjecture 1:

Having become a violent and carefully crafted organization, and committed drug trafficking, POK could be highly motivated in committing the crime. In addition, veteran employees did not get what they deserved from the IPO, and thus motivated to join the crime.

With careful plot, at the annual celebration on January 20, POK kidnapped GASTech executives in the chaos caused by the false fire alarm. POK members may have used modified truck to carry the kidnapees away.

This conjecture, however, could not properly explain

a. CEO’s escape.

b. Passengers in the private jet

c. The people in black at the celebration

We therefore derive another, more dramatic, conjecture.

Conjecture 2:

CEO and the leadership were already aware of the crime, the people in black at the celebration came from an outside circle. When POK was committing crime, GASTech set the trap, captured the six key criminal figures, and kept them in a secret location, while announcing to the public that their employees were kidnapped.

Fig. 3-1 shows our two conjectures for the disappearance and Figures 3-2 and 3-3 show the relevant evidences.

Fig.3-1 two conjectures of the disappearance.

Fig.3-2 Evidences supporting Conjecture 1.

Fig.3-3 Evidences supporting Conjecture 2.