Entry Name: "DAC-MC1"
VAST
Challenge 2014
Mini-Challenge 1
Team Members:
Parang Saraf,
Virginia Tech, parang@cs.vt.edu --
PRIMARY
Patrick Butler,
Virginia Tech, pabutler@vt.edu
Dr Naren Ramakrishnan, Virginia Tech, naren@cs.vt.edu
Student Team: Yes
Analytic Tools Used:
D3
Everything else
developed in-house
Approximately how many hours were spent
working on this submission in total?
Around 150
Hours
May we post your submission in the
Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2014 is complete? Yes
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01iIQ-6hs1o&feature=youtu.be
Link to the Tool:
http://embers.cs.vt.edu:60051/
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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.
|
S. No |
Explanation |
Supporting Evidence |
|
a. |
Who are the leaders? Founders:
Henk Bodrogi and Carmine Osvaldo (*) |
|
|
b. |
Who is part of the extended network? The
initial clues for finding the extended network resulted from a search query
which was run for solving Question 2 (timeline of events). The query reads as follows: We
searched for the following search terms to investigate about APA:
This made us search if POK is involved in any drug related
activities. Hence we searched for the following terms to confirm: (drug
OR drugs) (pok OR protector OR protectors) |
Figure 1: Search result and word cloud that gave the
initial clues into extended network
Figure 2: Text snippet from an article resulting from
searching about APA
Figure 3: Search result associating POK with drugs |
|
c. |
How has the group structure and organization changed over
time? We start our analysis by searching for the following search
term: (pok and leader)
The
first date zone that we selected was from Jan 1st 1998 till Dec 31st
1999. The second date zone was from
Jan 1st 2000 till Dec 31st 2009 and last was from Jan 1st
2010 till Jan 31st 2014. Figure 5 shows the resultant word clouds.
As we can see different names appear during different durations. Further
searching for these names in the news articles result in following
information:
|
Figure 4: Depicts the years when both the keywords “pok” and “leaders” peaked together
Figure 5: Dynamically generated word cloud based on search
results for the keywords (pok and leader) for three
different time duration |
|
d. |
Where are the potential
connections between the POK and GAStech? Finding potential connections between POK and GAStech was easy. A simple search for keyword “Kronos” in
the email widget resulted in the following email network (Figure 6) and the
resultant email threads (Figure 7). As we can see the email was initiated by Ms R Mies Haber from the
Administration department. Ms. Haber along with all the recipients of this
email are Kronos nationals. All the recipients are
from the Security Department and, after receipt, discussed the email further
among themselves by excluding Ms. Haber from the email thread. Quite
interestingly, almost all of them are new recruits in the security department
and a few share their family name with past POK leaders. Mentioned below are
the employees:
Minke Mies (Dept: Security, Joined: May 2013, Kronos) – Shares last name with Julianna Vann,
who is considered as the “symbol” for POK Hennie
Osvaldo (Dept:
Security, Joined: June 2011, Kronos) – Shares last name with Carmine Osvaldo,
one of the co-founders of POK – Shares last name with Henk
Bodrogi, one of the co-founders of POK Further, the email subject contains the word “ARISE” which
is the publication and website of Asterian People’s
Army. It is quite possible that Ms. Haber received this email from ARISE and
then forwarded the email to other individuals in the security department.
Figure 8 shows a text snippet from an untitled article from “Word Journal”
dated October 21st, 2013. This article was found during our search
for (APA OR Asterian) as a part of finding the
extended network of POK. This snippet also further strengthens our claim that
APA indeed is a part of the extended network of POK. |
Figure
6: Email network of the email having keyword “kronos”
in the subject
Figure
7: Email threads having keyword “Kronos” in the subject
Figure
8: Text Snippet from an article mentioning that ARISE is the website and
publication associated with APA. |
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.
|
Explanation |
Supporting Evidence |
|
We started our analysis by experimenting with
multiple keywords just to gauge the different type of news articles. During
this step, we identified that there were several news sources for which the
text made no sense! It appeared that the sentences were jumbled up and some
of the words were replaced by the synonyms. This was true for all the
articles of that particular news source. Hence to begin with we identified
the news sources whose text made sense. By this analysis we were left with
the following news sources, which we used in our further analysis:
For these selected news sources, we
searched for the keyword “Gastech” and limited our
search results only from January 19th till January 22nd.
The resultant word clouds on person, organization and location were our
starting point for the analysis. The word clouds are shown in Figure 9. For each of the entities mentioned in the
word cloud above, we used the browser’s in-built search functionality to do a
quick sanity check to identify the entities that required further analysis. A
list of all such relevant entities is as follows: -
Abila
Fire Department (resulting search keyword “fire”) -
Federigo Accardi
(resulting search keyword “fire”) -
Ravi
Danisliau (resulting search keyword “ravi”) -
Abila
Airport (resulting search keywords “airport” “jet” “aircraft” “airplane”
“plane” “helicopter”) -
Adrien
Carman (resulting search keyword “police”) -
Abila
Police Department (resulting search keyword “police”) -
Kronos
Police (resulting search keyword “police”) -
APA
and Asterian People Army (resulting search keywords
“APA” “Asterian”) -
Rome
(resulting search keyword “Rome”) -
Stan
Sanjorge, and others (resulting keyword
“executives”) -
Edvard Vann (resulting keywords “edvard” “vann”) |
Figure
9: Word cloud for keyword “GAStech” searched in
selected articles between January 19th and January 22nd |
The timeline of events along with supporting evidence in mentioned below
in the table:
|
S. No |
Search Terms |
Supporting Evidence |
|
1 |
Fire |
Figure
10: Relevant articles from keyword “fire” |
|
2 |
Police |
Figure
11: Relevant articles from keyword “police” |
|
3 |
Airport OR plane OR
helicopter OR aircraft OR jet OR jets OR airplane |
Figure
12: Relevant articles from keywords (airport OR plane OR helicopter OR
aircraft OR jet OR jets OR airplane) |
|
4 |
APA OR Asterian OR POK OR Protectors OR protector |
Figure
13: Relevant articles from keywords (APA OR Asterian
OR POK OR Protectors OR protector) |
|
5 |
Executives OR executive |
Figure
14: Relevant articles from keywords (executive OR executives) |
|
6 |
Gastech AND conference |
Figure
15: Relevant articles from keywords “gastech AND
conference” |
|
7 |
Edvard OR Vann |
Figure
16: Relevant articles from keywords (edvard OR
Vann) |
Based on these relevant news articles, the timeline is as follows:
|
S. No |
Date |
Time |
Event |
|
1 |
January 20th |
10:18 |
Fire
Alarm goes off at GAStech building and employees start evacuating |
|
2 |
January 20th |
10:20 |
A
helicopter leaves from the roof of the building |
|
3 |
January 20th |
10:25 |
The Fire
Department arrives at GAStech building |
|
4 |
January 20th |
11:23 |
Stan
Sanjorge Jr enters capitol building but there is no sign of other executives |
|
5 |
January 20th |
11:30 |
Some of
the fire officials exit the GAStech building |
|
6 |
January 20th |
11:46 |
Fire
Captain Federigo Accardi
gives all-clear at GAStech building and the fire department starts packing
its gear |
|
7 |
January 20th |
11:55 |
Fire
Captain Federigo Accardi
announces that it was a false alarm and the GAStech building is safe |
|
8 |
January 20th |
12:20 |
Abila
Police called to GAStech building for an unspecified emergency |
|
9 |
January 20th |
12:30 |
Plane
with seven or eight business type who appeared to be in a hurry left for
unknown destination from Abila International Airport |
|
10 |
January 20th |
12:40 |
Additional
police arrives at GAStech building and start setting up crowd control
barricades |
|
11 |
January 20th |
14:05 |
Kronos
government officials arrive at GAStech building |
|
12 |
January 20th |
14:30 |
Plane
with seven or eight business type people left for Rome and has nothing to do
with GAStech |
|
13 |
January 20th |
15:06 |
Police
begin to leave GAStech building and also the employees. Some police cars and
employees stay behind as it is suspected that police is questioning them |
|
14 |
January 20th |
18:10 |
GAStech
executive jet with Sten Sanjorge Jr on it arrived at Tethys. The jet was
quickly refueled and left with six GAStech officials onboard |
|
15 |
January 20th |
18:30 |
GAStech
executives arrive at Abila international airport and are taken by a limousine
to the GAStech building |
|
16 |
January 20th |
18:40 |
Security
experts arrive from Tethys to help police with the investigation |
|
17 |
January 20th |
19:00 |
The last GAStech employee "Edvard
Vann" who was being interviewed for his role in disappearance of
employees is released. |
|
18 |
January 20th |
19:35 |
Police
spokesman Adrien Carman officially acknowledges that fourteen GAStech
employees appear to be missing |
|
19 |
January 21st |
9:11 |
Police
revise the number of missing GAStech employees from fourteen to ten in their
conference |
|
20 |
January 21st |
10:00 |
GAStech
confirms that Stan Sanjorge Jr is safe in their conference in Tethys |
|
21 |
January 21st |
11:53 |
Homeland
Illumination correspondent Petrus Gerhard was picked up from a public
location by POK to convey an important message. |
|
22 |
January 21st |
12:45 |
POK takes
responsibility of kidnapping and demands $20 million ransom |
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.
Mentioned below are two explanations for missing GAStech employees:
|
S. No |
Explanation |
Supporting Evidence |
|
1 |
It is possible that the GAStech
employees were kidnapped by POK as they have released a statement claiming
responsibility and have even asked for $20 million ransom. |
Figure
17: POK kidnapped the employees |
|
2 |
It is also possible that
the GAStech executives fled the country or went for vacation. The whereabouts
of the first plane that left around 12:30 on January 20th are
still unknown. |
Figure
18: Employees left for Vacation or fled from the country |
|
3 |
It is also possible that
both of these events are true. Maybe the executives fled the country and POK
also captured some of the employees. |
|
