Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks

There is an increasing requirement for advanced analytical methodologies to help military intelligence analysts cope with the growing amount of data they are saturated with on a daily basis. Specifically, within the context of terror network analysis, one of the largest problems is the transformatio...

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Main Authors: Berardi, Christopher Walter, Solovey, Erin S., Cummings, M. L.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2013
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81776
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4284-272X
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author Berardi, Christopher Walter
Solovey, Erin S.
Cummings, M. L.
author2 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
author_facet Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Berardi, Christopher Walter
Solovey, Erin S.
Cummings, M. L.
author_sort Berardi, Christopher Walter
collection MIT
description There is an increasing requirement for advanced analytical methodologies to help military intelligence analysts cope with the growing amount of data they are saturated with on a daily basis. Specifically, within the context of terror network analysis, one of the largest problems is the transformation of raw tabular data into a visualization that is easily and effectively exploited by intelligence analysts. Currently, the primary method within the intelligence do-main is the node-link visualization, which encodes data sets by depicting the ties between nodes as lines between objects in a plane. This method, although useful, has limitations when the size and complexity of data grows. The matrix offers an alternate perspective because the two dimensions of the matrix are arrayed as an actors x actors matrix. This paper describes an experiment investigating node-link and matrix visualization techniques within social network analysis, and their effectiveness for the intelligence tasks of: 1) identifying leaders and 2) identifying clusters. The sixty participants in the experiment were all Air Force intelligence analysts and we provide recommendations for building visualization tools for this specialized group of users.
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spelling mit-1721.1/817762022-09-30T00:13:56Z Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks Berardi, Christopher Walter Solovey, Erin S. Cummings, M. L. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Humans and Automation Lab Berardi, Christopher Walter Solovey, Erin S. Cummings, M. L. There is an increasing requirement for advanced analytical methodologies to help military intelligence analysts cope with the growing amount of data they are saturated with on a daily basis. Specifically, within the context of terror network analysis, one of the largest problems is the transformation of raw tabular data into a visualization that is easily and effectively exploited by intelligence analysts. Currently, the primary method within the intelligence do-main is the node-link visualization, which encodes data sets by depicting the ties between nodes as lines between objects in a plane. This method, although useful, has limitations when the size and complexity of data grows. The matrix offers an alternate perspective because the two dimensions of the matrix are arrayed as an actors x actors matrix. This paper describes an experiment investigating node-link and matrix visualization techniques within social network analysis, and their effectiveness for the intelligence tasks of: 1) identifying leaders and 2) identifying clusters. The sixty participants in the experiment were all Air Force intelligence analysts and we provide recommendations for building visualization tools for this specialized group of users. Lincoln Laboratory National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 1136996) 2013-10-25T14:51:50Z 2013-10-25T14:51:50Z 2013-06 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/ConferencePaper 978-1-4673-6213-9 978-1-4673-6214-6 978-1-4673-6212-2 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81776 Berardi, Christopher W., Erin T. Solovey, and Mary L. Cummings. “Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks.” In 2013 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics, 278-283. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2013. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4284-272X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ISI.2013.6578843 Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE International Conference on Intelligence and Security Informatics Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MIT web domain
spellingShingle Berardi, Christopher Walter
Solovey, Erin S.
Cummings, M. L.
Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title_full Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title_fullStr Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title_full_unstemmed Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title_short Investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
title_sort investigating the efficacy of network visualizations for intelligence tasks
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/81776
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4284-272X
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