date/time representation in support of intelligence analysis david m. cassel sarah m. taylor, phd...
TRANSCRIPT
Date/Time Representation In Support Of
Intelligence AnalysisDavid M. Cassel
Sarah M. Taylor, PhDGary J. Katz
Lois C. ChildsRaymond D. Rimey, PhDLockheed Martin, IS&S Research Engineering
August 23rd, 2006
Outline How timelines help analysts Requirements for Timelines Lockheed Martin’s research Dachselt & Weiland critiques of standard
timelines
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How do timelines help analysis? Timelines provide ordering and temporal
context Make it easier to see conflicts: “On March 15th (2001 understood from previous context), Mr. Jones left
London for Kabul, beginning a trip of several months to countries in South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula.”
“Mr. Smith arrived in London in 2000, establishing a close working relationship with Mr. Jones there during the late spring of the following year.”
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Timeline Requirements Represent various kinds of time
expressions (absolute, relative, fuzzy, set) Reflect ordering and spacing of events Represent different levels of precision Represent reliability of information sources Be able to scale Maintain user orientation during
navigation
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Aspect 1: Smooth Zooming View changes slowly to allow continuity Hash marks change with zoom level
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Aspect 2: Fuzzy Dates and Times “April ’98” “until about September 2000”
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Aspect 2: Fuzzy Times (continued)<timex val=“2006-06-01T20:15”> 8:15 tonight</timex>
<timex2 set=“YES” val=“2006-05-WXX-4>Thursdays in <timex2 val=“2006-05”>May</timex2></timex2>
<timex2 val=“P3SU” anchor_dir=“BEFORE” anchor_val=“2006-06-01”>the past three summers</timex>
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Aspect 3: Abstraction
Present different levels of detail Reflect underlying information
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Aspect 4: Context Bar Shows
temporal context
Thumb for slide, resize
Lines within bar
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Aspect 5: Stacked Timelines
Shows patterns over time Visually find approximate
patterns
Based on Week Month Year User defined
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Problems with traditional timelines Dachselt & Weiland identified 6 problems
with traditional timelines1. Views are discrete and fixed, thus they are
bound to one specific [level of detail] and have a static size.
2. High-level views hide too much data, whereas detailed views suffer from lack of context and orientation.
3. Scalability, e.g. for mobile devices is not supported.
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Problems (continued)4. Missing support for zooming lenses, i.e. high-
detail views or focus areas within a coarser time view.
5. Requirement of additional cognitive efforts for reinterpretation and orientation due to missing smooth transition between views.
6. Display of absolute time is missing, i.e. scroll-bar based views (e.g. in e-mail applications) only show relative position within the collection.
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Conclusion Timelines are helpful for intelligence
analysis But there is room to improve prior tools We have laid out the features we are
developing and shown them to address Dachselt & Weiland’s criteria
Thanks for listening!Questions?
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References Dachselt, R.; Weiland, M.:
TimeZoom: A Flexible Detail and Context Timeline; Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006) Extended Abstracts, April 22-27, 2006, Montréal (Québec, Canada), pp. 682-687 Dachselt & Weiland’s paper
ACE2005: http://www.nist.gov/speech/tests/ace/ace05/doc/ace05eval_official_results_20060110.htm
TERN 2004: http://timex2.mitre.org/tern.html Ferro, Lisa. 2004. TIDES: 2003 Standard for the Annotation
of Temporal Expressions. http://timex2.mitre.org/annotation_guidelines/2003_timex2_standard_v1_3.pdf
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Backup
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InXight Time Wall Display: Icons, text Lanes for multiple
timelines No manipulation of
data Overlapping events
are visually blocked Points in time only
http://www.inxight.com/products/sdks/tw/features.php
August 23rd, 2006
TildenWoods Centrifuge Display: text, colored
bars Modes:
Absolute duration Relative duration Point in time
Can present multiple timelines
One layer of depth Must change
underlying tablehttp://www.tildenwoods.com/
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Visual Analytics VisuaLinks
Display: icons, text
Can compare timelines
Points only
Change database to add/modify material
Icons merged for same type/same time
http://www.visualanalytics.com/products/visuaLinks/index.cfm
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PNNL ThemeRiver
http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/technologies.html#themeriver
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I2 Analyst Notebook Display:
icons, text, links
Not specifically a timeline tool
Does not show time scale, duration
http://www.i2.co.uk/Products/Analysts_Notebook/
August 23rd, 2006
TimeZoom
Smooth zooming Good focus
feature
http://www-mmt.inf.tu-dresden.de/Projekte/Publikationen/details/0604.pdf