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

August 23rd, 2006

Backup

August 23rd, 2006

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/

August 23rd, 2006

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

August 23rd, 2006

PNNL ThemeRiver

http://www.pnl.gov/infoviz/technologies.html#themeriver

August 23rd, 2006

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