Using Visualization and Data Mining Tools for Crime Data Analysis

In this project, we are integrating Visualization and Data Mining Tools to analyze crime data.

The first technique we developed in the project is MSKDE - Marching Squares Kernel Density Estimation. It generates fast and accurate hotspot maps. MSKDE is described in the paper published in SIBGRAPI.

We also worked together with domain experts from police agencies of two different countries to identify and characterize five domain tasks inherent to the hotspot analysis problem and developed SHOC, a visualization tool that strives for simplicity and ease of use in helping users to perform all the domain tasks.

crowdLabs

crowdLabs is a social visualization repository for the scientific workflow management system VisTrails.

It adopts the model used by social Web sites and that integrates a set of usable tools and a scalable infrastructure to provide an environment for scientists to collaboratively analyze and visualize data.

The system combines benefits of social Web sites and science portals while at the same time addressing their limitations. Similar to social Web sites, crowdLabs aims to foster collaboration, but unlike these sites, it was specifically designed to support the needs of computational scientists, including the ability to access high-performance computers and manipulate large volumes of data. By providing mechanisms that simplify the publishing and use of analysis pipelines, it allows IT personnel and end users to collaboratively construct and refine portals. This lowers the barriers for the use of scientific analyses and enables broader audiences to contribute insights to the scientific exploration process, without the high costs incurred by traditional portals. In addition, it supports a more dynamic environment where new exploratory analyses can be added on-the-fly.

VisTrails

VisTrails is an open-source scientific workflow and provenance management system hosted at NYU-Poly that provides support for data exploration and visualization. A key distinguishing feature of VisTrails is a comprehensive provenance infrastructure that maintains detailed history information about the steps followed and data derived in the course of an exploratory task: VisTrails maintains provenance of data products, of the workflows that derive these products and their executions.