Graph Analyzer Widget Closer to Agility through Sense-Making

• Main Authors: Lavigne, Valerie, Lecocq, Regine, Martineau, Etienne, Mokhtari, Marielle
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Subjects: CANADA; COMPUTER PROGRAMS; FOREIGN REPORTS; GRAPHS; INFORMATION PROCESSING; Information Science; INTELLIGENCE; INTELLIGENCE ANALYSIS; SOCIAL COMMUNICATION; SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS; VISUAL AIDS; VISUALIZATION

Social Network Analysis (SNA) is essential to understand how information flows through Social Networks and is thought to be strategic for making sense of how individuals/groups/organizations work, collaborate, co-operate, grow or influence others. Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) Valcartier is performing research activities on SNA. The initial research activities were focusing on SNA conducted in a counter-insurgency context and were aiming at investigating SNA methods and tools that could augment an intelligence analysis capability. In the spirit of the Visualization domain, which allows information/knowledge to be derived from the visual representation of data/information; visualization widgets were designed and grouped under the term Graph Analyzer to assist intelligence analysts in comprehending and interpreting social network (SN)-related data (automatically extracted). The Graph Analyzer Widget and other developed widgets exploit the graphical rendering of information/knowledge (e.g. graphs, diagrams, charts, etc.) which are the visual artefacts representing data, illustrating relationships and patterns among data, and also allow analysis and comparisons between graphical representations of data sets. These widgets propose interactive, explanatory and tailored visualizations to support sense-making. They combine visual representations of graph diagrams composed of nodes and links to other visual representations such as statistical results, lists of nodes, geospatial and temporal aspects or the semantic meaning of links based on a SN ontology. Presented at the 19th International Command & Control Research & Technology Symposium (ICCRTS) held 16-19 June, 2014 in Alexandria, VA.