Immersive Visualisation of Geo-Temporal Narratives in Law Enforcement
Andrew Cunningham, James A. Walsh, Bruce Hunter Thomas · 2018
Recent advances in virtual reality technologies enable high-fidelity exploration of data in immersive environments. This is advantageous for professional applications of high-dimensional datasets (such as geo-temporal narratives), as we can leverage all three spatial axes while immersing the user in the information itself. Geo-temporal narratives tell a story of entities, their movements, and as a result, their potential relationships, thereby defining the who, what, where, and when that define a story; everything except the why. This paper describes an immersive virtual reality system we have developed to convey these narratives, specifically focusing on the law enforcement domain. The system lets users not only view who was where and when, but also view explicit and implicit relationships between entities, repeated visits to recurring locations, as well as the crucial descriptive information supporting the why. We present the results of an expert review of the system from federal law enforcement and defence agencies that validate our approach.