Designing Calendar Visualization for Visual Analytics Law Enforcement Toolkit

Shantanu Joshi, Chang Yoon Kim, Kushal Patel Abish Malik, Ross Maciejewski, Insoo Woo, Ahmad Mujahid , Yun Jang, David S. Ebert

Project Summary Exploration of criminal incident reports an ever expanding issue for

law enforcement agencies. Visual Analytics Law Enforcement Toolkit (VALET) attempts to address this problem with a variety of features

VALET provides a suite of interactive visual and analytical tools for data exploration and analysis

System features include: Geo-spatial heat-mapping techniques for quick detection of

anomalies Multiple time series views for temporal trend analysis and

prediction Prediction algorithms for forecasting future criminal, traffic and

civil (CTC) incident events

Future ImprovementsCalendar View Improve an importance driven calendar view to provide efficient data

exploration methods “Overview” to allow the user to detect the overall patterns of

events and times of interest “Jump scroll” to make going from one end of the calendar view to

the other faster and more convenient Variable font size along with the height of the row

Clock View Employ animations for better user selection

e.g., making a time slice slightly bigger once the user’s finger is on it.

References Abish Malik, Ross Maciejewski, Timothy F. Collins and David S. Ebert.

Visual Analytics Law Enforcement Toolkit. IEEE International Conference on Technologies for Homeland Security, 2010

Jarke J. van Wijk and Edward. Cluster Calendar based Visualization of Time Series Data

Colorbrewer: Color advice for maps. http://colorbrewer2.org/

Figure 1:a) Kernel density estimated heat maps employed for visualizing CTC hotspots b) Interactive menu to select the time range c) Time series view of CTC incidents aggregated by day Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the VACCINE Public Safety Coalition for providing data and valuable user feedback. This work has been supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s VACCINE Center under Award Number 2009-ST-061-CI0003Project Goal

Calendar View Visualization of data over time laid in the format of a calendar Time series display that provides a means of viewing data over a

user defined length of time Row / Column histograms aiding in searching for cyclical and

seasonal trends or anomalies

Clock View Visualization of data over a 24-hour period in the format of a clock 12-hour/24-hour views available

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Design ProcessCalendar View The days of the week were implemented as an overview so that they stay in place even as

the calendar view scrolls up or down The height of each row is a linear function of the sum of crimes in a particular row. Thus

rows with anomalous occurrence of crime now stand out based on size and color The data is color coded dynamically at run time based on the data populating the calendar

view The font of the row with the most number of crimes is larger than the others to make sure it

stands out even more

Clock View Each slice of the clock is its own individual object The same color shades are used for both the Clock View and Calendar View The data is color coded dynamically at run time based on the data populating the clock

view. The number of incidents is clearly written in each slice in the Clock View, along with the time

of the incident.

Figure 2:a) Calendar view with uniform rows and a sequential color scheme which is shown in the legend (left-most) b) Calendar view whose rows are of variable height. These improvements make data analysis process more efficient c) A different section of the calendar view in Figure 2b

Figure 3:Clock views showing hours and the number of incidents. Each hour is shaded depending on how many incidents there are and each hour is also touch-sensitive.

Figure 4:The proposed implementation of the jump scroll. The user would touch the area of the calendar view that interests him/her the most in the calendar overview (the region represented by the white rectangle) and immediately be taken to the appropriate location in the actual calendar view