Supporting the Externalisation of Thinking in Criminal Intelligence Analysis

Abstract

Abstract-At the end of the criminal intelligence analysis process there are relatively well established and understood approaches to explicit externalisation and representation of thought that include theories of argumentation, narrative and hybrid approaches that include both of these. However the focus of this paper is on the little understood area of how to support users in the process of arriving at such representations from an initial starting point where little is given. The work is based on theoretical considerations and some initial studies with end users. In focusing on process we discuss the requirements of fluidity and rigor and how to gain traction in investigations, the processes of thinking involved including abductive, deductive and inductive reasoning, how users may use thematic sorting in early stages of investigation and how tactile reasoning may be used to externalize and facilitate reasoning in a productive way. In the conclusion section we discuss the issues raised in this work and directions for future work.Keywords-externalisation of thinking; argument; narrative; thematic sorting; criminal intelligence I.CONTEXT VALCRI (Visual AnaLytics for sensemaking in Criminal Intelligence Analysis) is a large scale integrating project funded by the European Community under the FP7 Security Programme. The project spans forty-four months with a budget of ~€13M and the consortium comprises seventeen partners from the EU and one from the US. The project aims to create an advanced visual analytics reasoning and sensemaking system to support criminal intelligence analysis. This involves the development and integration of state-of-the-art technology that will include sophisticated user interfaces for techniques such as spatio-temporal analysis and semi-automated semantic knowledge extraction. The project will develop an analyst user interface that allows direct manipulation of information objects in an intuitive way, coupled with a reasoning workspace that allows analysts to exploit data in large data sets. The reasoning workspace is broken down into a data space that allows the analyst to see and understand the data they have, an analysis space that provides direct manipulation functions to act on the data, and a hypothesis space to provide an area to develop and assemble chains of evidence into narratives and arguments. Thus central to the VALCRI system is the need to represent and externalise the analyst's thinking, from initial stages where there is little information available and the way forward unclear, to the final stages of investigations where there may be much clearer understanding of emerging narrative and supporting argument. In this paper we begin by considering the state-of-the-art in the representation of 'well-formed' criminal investigations, by which we mean investigations in their later stages, and then consider the issue of supporting investigators in moving towards these. II. SUPPORT FOR THE LATER STAGES OF ANALYTIC REASONINGIn this section we consider literature related to evidential s...

Community-Oriented Policing and Technological Innovations

“…The evidential structuring and reasoning approaches described by Passmore et al (2015) encompassed argumentation schemas (Wigmore 1931; Wagenaar et al Bex et al 2006;Allen et al 2015), narrative (Pennington and Hastie 1992;Rao 2003;Bruner 2004;Segel and Heer 2010;Attfield and Blandford 2011;Chapin et al 2013) and thematic sorting Attfield and Blandford 2011;Rooney et al 2014) and the role that each served during sensemaking and analytical activities. Passmore et al (2015) urged that any software application design that is aimed at supporting thinking and reasoning throughout analytical and problem-solving tasks, should incorporate a hybrid of structuring and reasoning approaches.…”

Visilant: Visual Support for the Exploration and Analytical Process Tracking in Criminal Investigations

“…For a comprehensive discussion of relevant theoretical frameworks of network analysis in security domains we refer the reader to the collaborative book edited by Masys [28], in particular the chapter by Strang [47], for the design considerations of network analysis tools. A review of available tools for representation and externalization in criminal investigations is provided by Passmore et al [36]. Xu and Chen [53] discussed the challenges of terrorist networks and existing solutions, concluding that visualization tools revealing structures and interactions within criminal networks are needed.…”