UKON-MC3

VAST Challenge 2014

Mini-Challenge 3

Team Members

Fabian Fischer, fabian.fischer@uni-konstanz.de PRIMARY
Florian Stoffel, florian.stoffel@uni-konstanz.de

Student Team: no (PhD Students)

Team Number: #35

Streaming User ID: Fabian.Fischer@uni-konstanz.de

Analytic Tools Used:

Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in total? 50

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

Video UKON-MC3.wmv (WMV)

Questions

MC3.1 – Within 3 hours after start the final data stream, send an email to VASTChal2014MC3@vacommunity.org containing:

  1. An image showing the streaming data in your visual analytics tool. In this image, identify an event of interest that you intend to investigate further.
  2. The content of the final message in the data stream

Visual Analytics System

The different displays of the overall visual analytics tool for real-time data streams. The first and second image shows the display for Stream Monitoring with a real-time window showing the raw event stream and a geographic map (based on available coordinates or derived from street name locations). The third image shows the NVisAware visualization for stream analytics focusing on sliding slices. Each slice represents a summary of a sliding window to not overload the analyst with a high rate of incoming events. The fourth image shows the Real-Time Event Timeline visualization to handle the insight management in real-time while the fifth image shows the Real-Time Search & Exploration interface, which provides a real-time search and a dashboard with real-time charts using ElasticSearch Kibana.

Final Message in the Data Stream

2014-01-23 21:32:00 - RT @KronosStar There has been an explosion from inside the apartment building.  Several people are down. #KronosStar #DancingDolphinFire #AFDHeroes

MC3.2 – Describe the timeline of up to five major events that you discover in the streaming data. This timeline should include information from all three segments of the data stream if needed. Use specific microblog records and call center data to support your description, but do not simply mimic back the data stream. Provide a concise description of important participants, locations and durations. Focus your response on the events themselves, rather than on the individuals reporting the events. Please limit your answer to no more than ten images and 1500 words.

Remark: This colored timeline with major events is created within our tool of course after the streams finished for illustrative purposes. However, it is based on extracted keywords and insights of interesting events which were identified by the analyst in real-time. In the following answers we will show figures from displays which were incrementally updated.

Event 1 - POK Rally with different Speakers

Quick Overview 
2014-01-23 17:00:00 - POK rally to start in Abila City Park.
2014-01-23 17:02:31 - Concerns of violence.
2014-01-23 17:27:00 - End of Lucio's speech.
2014-01-23 19:02:00 - Sylvia Marek thanks speakers Lucio Jakab Lorenzo Di Stefano and Dr. Newman #POKrally #AbilaPost
2014-01-23 19:07:00 - POK rally ends in a concert by the band Viktor-E.? The crowd is calmer than usual for a POK rally but police remain vigilant. #KronosStar

Participants: Viktor-E (band), Sylvia Marek (leader and speaker), Lucio Jakab (speaker), Lorenzo Di Stefano (speaker) and Dr. Newman (speaker)
When we started the stream, we immediately realize users possibly providing a lot of less interesting messages (e.g., KronosQuoth). We use our interactive filtering (A) to hide such events. We see hints in the stream, that there is a rally about to start (2014-01-23 17:00:00) located at Abila Park (B). We star that message and label it (POK Rally!) to be able to retrieve it in the timeline view as well. During the following minutes the view gets updated and we see (E) some attending people talking about it. The colored symbol within the markers (E) as well as the color of the message in (A) represents the sentiment value. One user gets hungry (slight negative sentiment) and wants to head off for Gelato Galore (2014-01-23 18:15:14). At around 19:07 after several speakers, the rally ends peacefully.

Workflow Example - Switching between different displays during real-time analysis.

Provide a concise description of important participants, locations and durations.

Event 2 - Dolphin Apartment Fire

Quick Overview 
2014-01-23 18:25:00 - Renovation work
2014-01-23 18:30:00 - Electrical Smell
2014-01-23 18:41:00 - Fire Reports
2014-01-23 18:42:00 - Location known: Fire at Dancing Dolphin Apartment Complex
2014-01-23 18:45:31 - Flames (Second floor of six floor apartment building)
2014-01-23 18:59:01 - A resident may be trapped on upper floor, who gets rescued.
2014-01-23 18:52:37 - Evacuations
2014-01-23 20:00:00 - Injured Firefighter and taken to hospital later.
2014-01-23 20:32:52 - Abila fire is under control. #NewsOnline
In the Timeline View we can read messages with negative sentiment. One of them is this: 
2014-01-23 18:30:00 - GreyCatCollectibles - Yuck - electrical smell is getting worse
This is interesting, there might be some problem, but we don't know yet. Better keep this person in mind! The analyst get overwhelmed with individual messages and events, so we switch to our NVisAware visualization. In the following we see the slices before the fire and then a slice which is highly different from the previous ones, because many persons are discussing the fire now. Remark: This is a real-time visualization: The sliding slices are calculated all the time in constant intervals and immediately pushed to the graphical user interface. Because of this, we have a slight delay, because we only receive one summary slice per time interval (can be defined in the REST service).

NVisAware: Sliding Slices before and during the start of the fire.

Let's check where those fire reports come from. Let's switch back to our real-time geographic map display.



We also see in the slices that the police is doing an evacuation of the area starting around 18:52:37 until 19:49:00. Now the question comes up, where does GreyCatCollectibles live. Might that be related with the whole fire? It is about 18:50 - we know there is a fire going on, so let's switch to real-time search and exploration and investigate all messages of this person in detail.

Real-Time Search and Exploration for Ad-hoc query to check hypothesis if GreyCatCollectibles is living at Dolphin Apartment.

The guy calls the fire department which is confirmed, because soon after we get official fire reports. We see that the person is reporting about the fire, so we know this person was in the building before the fire. The source of the fire might really be an electrical issue.

Event 3 - Black Van Person Hit and Run

Quick Overview 
2014-01-23 19:20:00 - Black van is hitting a car.
2014-01-23 19:21:01 - Black van is hitting a guy on a bike in front of location BrewveBeenServed.
2014-01-23 19:23:54 - Abila Police Department issues description of hit and run vehicle: a black van with partial license plate L829 #APD
2014-01-23 19:40:00 - Someone is help bike guy home.
2014-01-23 19:40:29 - So van tried a t-turn to exit; cop blocked him off; van and cop doors open

The black van is hitting a car (19:20:00) and afterwards (19:21:01) a guy on a bike.

Event 4 - Black Van Shooting at Gelato with Hostages

Quick Overview 
2014-01-23 19:40:00 - FELONY ASSAULT/WEAPON-IN PROGRESS (N. Alexandrias St / N. Ithakis St)
2014-01-23 19:40:29 - A cop got shot in front of Gelato Galore.
2014-01-23 19:42:11 - Lots of people trapped inside gelato. idiot standing up is going to get shot #TAG
2014-01-23 19:43:11 - Report of hostage standoff #Abila
2014-01-23 19:43:57 - Ambulance on its way.
2014-01-23 19:44:28 - DIRE EMERGENCY/SWAT TEAM DISPATCHED
2014-01-23 19:47:00 - Additional APD units have been called to the scene of the shooting near General Grocer and Gelato Galore. #KronosStar
2014-01-23 19:56:57 - #APD SWAT team arrives in armored vehicle #AbilaPost
2014-01-23 20:07:09 - Police have requested that the public stay away from the hostage scene near Alexandrias & Ithakis. #KronosStar
2014-01-23 21:01:00 - Yelling FROM INSIDE the van! #TAG
2014-01-23 21:01:00 - the screaming guy is back in the van looks like hes in there screaming too - fighting with his partner maybe?
2014-01-23 21:21:11 - a man and woman have surrended to police two more people have left the van i think there hostages
2014-01-23 21:21:11 - one male and one female surrendered 2 female hostages saved #Abila #CentralBulletin
2014-01-23 21:21:11 - The hostage situation has been resolved. Names of the hostages are not being released until families can be notified. #APD
2014-01-23 21:24:13 - APD wont release names bet you i can guess there employer #GASTECH
Event 3 about the black van driving around might emerge into Event 4. A black van is now blocked at Gelato Galore and now the police realizes that there are hostages in the van. This is the reason why we separate this event as new event. We have a license plate L829 in Event 3. The police could easily check if the Hit and Run is related to the van having the hostages on board. An officer gets shot, eventually two persons surrendered to the SWAT team and the situation has been resolved at 21:21:11.

Event 5 - Dolphin Apartment Explosion

Quick Overview 
2014-01-23 21:00:00 - Abila fire flares up. top floor has collapsed. #abila #NewsOnline
2014-01-23 21:30:00 - There has been an explosion from inside the apartment building.  Several people are down. #KronosStar #DancingDolphinFire #AFDHeroes
2014-01-23 21:30:45 - explosion heard at dancing dolphin apartment #Abila #CentralBulletin
2014-01-23 21:32:00 - RT @KronosStar There has been an explosion from inside the apartment building.  Several people are down. #KronosStar #DancingDolphinFire #AFDHeroes
Just at the end of the stream there happens an explosion at the Dolphin Apartment. This might be a completely new incident or related to the fire flaring up on 21:00:00.

MC3.3 – Select one of your five major events from question MC 3.2 that you consider to be most likely to provide additional clues to the investigation of the GASTech disappearances. Describe the roles of the participants. Describe how other events you identified in MC3.2 may have influenced your selected event. Provide a hypothesis and evidence as to whom you suspect as being directly involved in the GAStech disappearances, either as perpetrators or victims. Please limit your response to no more than five images and 500 words.

The responsible persons should definitely check out the other possible black vans. Their might be another one left the scene, while the police was focusing on the shooting and the black van at Gelato Galore.

If you compare the timestamps and the locations of multiple reports about black vans, we definitely have several vans around. We are wondering if one of the others especially this last one is relevant. We should check out, what's going on with possible other vans.

There are many strange messages from Officia1AbilaPost which are probably fake, however they spread links to different websites. If possible it would be good to reveal the real identity of this poster. One of the persons living at Dancing Dolphin seems to miss "Rachel". It would be good to figure out who this could be. 
2014-01-23 18:52:27 - GreyCatCollectibles- haven't heard from rachel in days. hope she's off on vaca somewhere
The two hostages are free, so we need to focus on the search of the other missing hostages. We assume that the hostages were indeed employer of GASTECH. Now, we need to find the other ones. The sightings of the black vans might lead us to the others.