Entry Name:\A0 "UKON-Streeb-GC"

VAST Challenge 2017
Grand Challenge

Team Members:

Dirk Streeb, University of Konstanz, streeb@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de\A0\A0\A0\A0\A0\A0 PRIMARY
Juri Buchm\FCller, University of Konstanz, buchmueller@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de
Udo Schlegel, University of Konstanz, udo.3.schlegel@uni-konstanz.de
Wolfgang Jentner, University of Konstanz, jentner@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de
Michael Behrisch, Harvard University, behrisch@g.harvard.edu
Johannes H\E4u\DFler, University of Konstanz, hauessler@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de
Bruno Schneider, University of Konstanz, schneider@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de
Daniel Seebacher, University of Konstanz, seebacher@dbvis.inf.uni-konstanz.de

Student Team: \A0NO

Tools Used:

Custom tools developed for each of the 2017 MCs including

SIZE: Satellite image zooming and exploration by Udo Schlegel for VAST Challenge 2017 MC3\A0

Visual Movement Explorer, developed by Udo Schlegel and Dirk Streeb for VAST Challenge 2015 MC1 and slightly modified to suit the new demands

KNIME\A0

Tableau

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

20

May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2017 is complete? YES

Video

https://youtu.be/3_kYDBC3ftk

Questions

1\A0\A0 Provide your best hypothesis with supporting evidence of what is happening in the Lekagul Preserve that is affecting the Rose-crested Blue Pipit. Your answer should include identification of who is responsible for the impactful activities, what they are doing, where impactful events are occurring, when and how often these occur, how these events are taking place, and why they are happening.\A0 Please limit your response to 1000 words and 6 images.

To begin with, we tried to figure out what kind of birds pipits are. According to Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipit] they are rather small and breed on the ground. Hence, they are vulnerable to pet dogs, that some tourists might bring disobeying the park regulations. They are territorial birds and ground feeding such that local changes in their habitat might affect them strongly. Otherwise, the family of pipits seems to be rather diverse. We expect that a combination of three factors lead to the decline of the Rose-crested Blue Pipit population. We describe each, namely destruction of the habitat, continuous stress and pollution, in the following paragraphs.

The destruction of the habitat in the park could be a factor for the pipit population to decline. For example, there is an upgrade of a road in the park from 2014 to 2016, which destroys an area in which the pipits could breed. Additionally, the expanded road may divide the former larger habitat into two smaller ones. On the image below at the lower right end of the right markers, you can see that there is a small road in the beginning, which gets expanded up until the end. Another cause for the destruction are changes in mining or mineral deposit that happen along the years. They develop from the left to quite in the middle, next to where the road expansion took place. Locations of major changes are indicated in the image below.

At last, global warming might cause observable changes in the satellite images, e.g., less snow, which could have negative effects on the pipits, and hence negative changes to the habitat.

Another factor that might harm wildlife is a constantly high level of stress. Especially in summer a lot happens in the park. There are many tourists who may flush animals by making noise or moving quickly, e.g., cycling or running. Our findings from MC1 show that tourists are there for a long season from spring to fall. But this is not it, car and heavy traffic continues all day long. Even in winter there is a considerable amount of traffic passing through the park. At nighttime heavy traffic is as prevalent as during the day. For example, an employee of Kasios notes that his company has "odd transportation hours" in a newsletter (12.2015). Our findings from MC1 show this permanent exposition very clearly as for 4-axle trucks, 2-axle buses and 3-axle buses in the image below. In the image below each column represents one trip through the park with colors representing the different kinds of places passed as given in the park map. The roughly straight diagonal lines indicate almost constant traffic across day and night time.

Finally, pollution seems to be a prevalent problem. Tourists bring a lot of litter, such that volunteers collected more than 50 bags of trash and refuse in 2013. Industrial growth, e.g., visible in (adjusted) stock prices of local companies (see image below), also contributes to more pollution as higher production leads to more waste if processes are not optimized quicker than they are expanded.

Besides these general pattern there seems to be a more acute problem with illegal disposal of highly toxic waste. The image below shows some suspicious regular late-night truck movement on Tuesdays and Thursdays to a remote place in the park next to ranger-stop3 between 3 an 5am. We suspect that these trucks dump toxic, non-neutralized, Methylosmolene (or maybe another VOC or substance harmful to vertebrates) in its liquid form. This chemical substance falls under a regulation which took into effect in 2013.

In satellite images, we found further hints towards this hypothesis, as the appearance of a nearby lake changes dramatically from 2014 to 2016. We guess that Kasios or Radiance ColorTek could be responsible for this illegal disposal as they suffered from stricter regulations and introduced a new kind of spray paint in early 2015 respectively.

Further, gas measurements show strange records, which most likely can only be caused by manipulation, regarding the emission of Methylosmolene. The image below shows that for sensor 6 measurements of missing/manipulated values shown in pink as well as high values shown in blue only appear on westerly or south-westerly winds. This points to Kasios, the only company of the given four, with its premises to the south-west of sensor 6 trying to hide illegal emissions of the VOC.

We estimate that the pollution with toxic Methylosmolene (or another harmful substance) is the most impactful factor to the decline of the pipit population. Secondly, the emission of Methylosmolene has negative effects on the environment, but only affects the southeastern end of the park due to the westerly winds when it is emitted. Further, we suspect Kasios and Radiance ColorTek to be responsible for these illegal activities. We base our suspicion partially on the stock market data, which declined after the stricter regulations took into effect in 2013 and begin to rise in 2015. This coincides with expansion plans of both companies and the timeframe in which the disposal must have begun. We assume that Kasios had high costs for complying with the new environmental standards, both in financial terms and quality wise. Therefore, Kasios' profit was low despite good sales and their stock value diminished. By emitting toxic waste illegally both can reduce costs and benefit from a higher margin as well as higher overall sales, e.g., via Kasios' new web-store or their cooperation with PaperKlips. At the same time Radiance ColorTek started their new product line with similar problems, yet we suspect that they immediately started to dispose their toxic waste by truck. Hence, their stock price increased steadily.

2\A0 Provide a timeline that comprehensively describes the relevant activities in Mistford, the Industrial Park, and the Preserve that helps concisely describe the events identified in Question 1.\A0 Please limit your response to 1000 words and 6 images.\A0

In 2010 officials set new stricter regulations for Volatile Organic Compound including Methylosmolene to take into effect in June 2013. Meanwhile Kasios can celebrate one of the best years the company had in 2012. With financial help of the government, Radiance ColorTek and Kasios are able to modify their processes in order not to use VOCs in March 2013. Radiance had a hard time achieving this. Kasios as well suffered from the restructuring of their processes as can be seen in their falling stock price.

In early 2014 both companies get in touch more closely in the newly established Company Sustainability Champion (CSC) program. Instead of honestly trying to improve their production for environmental benefit, they begin to exchange information about issues with meeting environmental restrictions. Kasios, who suffered more from the strict regulations, proposed Radiance to solve their problem of getting rid of toxic waste from Radiance's new spray paint to be introduced in early 2015. In exchange Radiance manipulates the sensor for Methylosmolene of gas measurement station 6, which happens to be located on their premises.

Following their conspiracy, Kasios begins to pick up Radiance's waste and dispose it at night at ranger-stop3. On the other hand Radiance manipulates the sensor on request of Kasios when there are westerly winds. As a result, Kasios can exhaust large amounts of Methylosmolene that drift to the east without obviously showing up in any sensor records as all other sensors are positioned in a semi-circle towards the west and the values of sensor 6 are mislabeled.

Kasios can implement their expansion plans from 2014 through 2017 just like Radiance who financed their new production line with a stock split. Both companies profit from this conspiracy and their stock prices rise quickly. They take profit from polluting the environment.

At the same time Indigo Sol Boards shows modest growth and implements a socially responsible product line of girls' skateboards in 2015. In 2016 they open a new building.

The last company, Roadrunner, is highly innovative and introduces several new products like smart running shoes and a fitness kit in April 2014 and several fitness apps. They also act environmental friendly by selling refurbished or slightly damaged products instead of disposing them. However, and despite of positive press coverage, e.g., from CNET at CES in April 2015, their business profits did not take off.

3\A0 How confident are you in your hypothesis? What factors impact your confidence in your hypothesis? What additional information would help strengthen your hypothesis? Please limit your response to 500 words and 3 images.

As we do not have detailed knowledge about the area or the domain of pipits and their habitats, we can only speculate on patterns and findings in the data. This means we can only provide hints which events could influence the birds, but we do not have proofs for it. However, we are confident that Mitch, who has these kinds of context knowledge, would be able to use our findings.

We are as well confident that there are things changing in the park. These changes can be observed from the satellite images, for example the quite obvious change of one of the lake's appearance. Further, we can observe that companies nearby the park are expanding either by reading the newsletter or by watching the stock prices of these companies.

In addition, something else seems to be going on with some of these companies. At Tuesday and Thursday nights there is very suspicious behavior of 4-axle trucks driving to ranger-stop3 and back quite regularly. Additionally, gas sensor records for Methylosmolene is missing or more likely mislabeled, which would be needed to observe that the companies obey environmental regulations. Combined, both provide a strong hint towards some illegal behavior.

However, we are not confident about suspects. We suspect that Kasios and Radiance ColorTek are to blame for the pollution and hence the reduction of the pipit population. Gas sensor data points towards Kasios and the truck tours at night would fit to the mentioning of the driver in one of the newsletters. Nonetheless, both might be responsible for the disposals by truck as well on their own. They had problems with reducing their VOC emissions and Radiance introduced a new series of metallic spray paint in early 2015, which falls in the time frame in which the disposals by truck began.

Besides that, there could be other factors influencing wildlife negatively. We lack context knowledge in order to connect our findings to final conclusions in the datasets, which are rather sparse when it comes to the time they cover. More domain knowledge about pollution and birds in general would definitely help, too. So, to strengthen our hypothesis more complete datasets and more data with the overlapping time frames would certainly help. Additionally, more specific data, like water samples of the lake we suspect to be polluted, could help answer targeted questions based on our hypothesis. To convict one of the suspects we could use transport and accounting lists in order to identify which chemical substances they purchase and how they dispose their waste. Industrial engineers might be able to figure out how substances flow along production lines and point out where in the process toxic waste incurred.

4\A0 What are your proposed next steps? Do you have a course of action to correct the problems in the Lekagul Preserve and help the Rose-crested Blue Pipit?\A0 Please limit your response to 500 words and 3 images.

To counteract the environmental threats that lead to the reduction of the pipit population we propose to engage in the following measures. In the order of severity we suggest to begin with solving the acute problem of pollution first. The most important step is to prohibit further disposals of toxic waste.

The police authority in charge should investigate prior occasions. Compliance to existing regulations needs to be tested more strictly and more regularly. Existing contamination has to be removed from the park. Later on imposing even stricter regulations could improve the situation in the long run. This effort should be not only directed towards industry with its highly toxic waste, but also include litter brought by tourists.

In the medium run, the overall stress level for wildlife should be reduced. To achieve this goal traffic needs to be reduced. Measures could reach from closing selected areas of the park for all kinds of traffic (including hiking) via optimizing transit routes, e.g., opening gates 5 and 6 could reduce detours via ranger-stop0, to educating tourists about the effects of fast movement and loud noise on wildlife. Another approach would be to introduce low-stress times on a daily (close park for traffic at night) or longer term basis (open only most important routes in winter). Furthermore, an increased toll could add to the reduction of traffic.

In the long run, park authorities could focus on more ambitious plans like the restoration of habitats. Closing some roads, and maybe some campgrounds as well, could enable them to establish areas large enough to be sustainably inhabited by wildlife. Where needed reforestation or similar efforts could help establish beneficial conditions. By any means further land use within the park should be prohibited.