VAIA 2014 - International Workshop on Visual Analytics for Investigative Analysis

Analysts in intelligence and investigative analysis environments are regularly confronted with large amounts of seemingly un-related data that is a mix of structured and un-structured, and both quantitative and qualitative. The data is also of varying quality, is out-of-sequence or incomplete, and from multiple sources. Investigative analysis is not merely about re-organising data and information into a new format [1], it is about the transformation of data into actionable intelligence. This is an intellectual endeavour that sorts the 都ignificant from the insignificant, assessing them severally and jointly, and arriving at a conclusion by the exercise of judgment: part induction, part deduction [2], and part abduction [3]. To this we bring Visual Analytics - the science of analytical reasoning supported by interactive visual interfaces [4]. Visual Analytics combines automatic semantic data extraction with interactive visual analysis methods, dynamically coupled with human interaction to gain knowledge from data [5] - as an alternative approach to supporting the intellectual processes in investigative analysis.
This full-day workshop will provide an introduction to Visual Analytics, and discussions of the process of sense-making and decision-making in an investigative analysis context, and the human factors and cognitive engineering issues in the design of Visual Analytics systems especially in the support of insight generation. The workshop will also incorporate hands-on investigative exercises using a number of software tools in conjunction with representative big data samples.
References
[1] Krizan, L. (1999). Intelligence Essentials for Everyone. Washington, D.C.: Joint Military Intelligence College.
[2] Millward, W. (2001). Life in and out of Hut 3. In F. H. Hinsley & A. Stripp (Eds.), Codebreakers: The inside story of Bletchley Park (pp. 17-29). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[3] Moore, D. T. (2011). Critical thinking and intelligence analysis (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Defense Intelligence College.
[4] Thomas, J., Cook, K.: Illuminating the Path: Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics. IEEE-Press (2005) [5] The VisMaster Consortium (2014). The Visual Analytics Process.