Entry Name:  " Visual Analysis for Wildlife Preserve "

VAST Challenge 2017
Grand Challenge

 

 

Team Members:

Lijing Lin lijing.lin@pku.edu.cn

Min Lu min.lu@pku.edu.cn

Guozheng Li guozheng.li@pku.edu.cn

Shuai Chen shuai.chen@pku.edu.cn

Chufan Lai chufan.lai@pku.edu.cn

Ruike Jiang ruike.jiang@pku.edu.cn

Qiangqiang Liu qiangqiang.liu@pku.edu.cn

Xiaoru Yuan xiaoru.yuan@pku.edu.cn

Student Team:  YES

 

Tools Used:

Excel

PowerPoint

D3

Systems developed in Mini-Challenge 1, Mini-Challenge 2 and Mini-Challenge 3. 

 

Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in total?

60 hours

 

May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2017 is complete? YES

 

Video

 

 

Questions

1      Provide your best hypothesis with supporting evidence of what is happening in the Lekagul Preserve that is affecting the Rose-crested Blue Pipit. Your answer should include identification of who is responsible for the impactful activities, what they are doing, where impactful events are occurring, when and how often these occur, how these events are taking place, and why they are happening.  Please limit your response to 1000 words and 6 images.

 

We identified Kasios Office Furniture company as the one who should be responsible for the impactful activities in Lekagule Preserve.

Kasios is a company managing the business of furniture. As the MC2 (Figure 1) concludes, Kasios is highly related to the release of Chlorodinine and Methylosmolene. Chlorodinine is one type of chemical that damages the livings and environment severely. And the Methylosmolene has the toxic side effects in vertebrates.

Figure 1. The Interface of MC2. a). Calendar View, b). ISOMap View, c). Projection View and d). Sensor Read, e). Wind Direction Difference View，and f). Wind View

 

As the stock line chart illustrates (Figure 2), Kasios company kept a soaring increase since December, 2014. Before that, Kasios had already expanded its scale by recruiting over 30 new employees (from the semi-annual newsletter in Dec. 2014).

Figure 2. The stock line chart shows the quarterly earnings per share of four companies. The lines in blue, orange, silver and yellow represents the company Indigo Sol Boards, Kasios Office Furniture, Radiance ColourTek and Roadrunner Fitness Electronics respectively.  

 

From the newsletter, we have found some evidence that the company Kasios was expanding.

1.     In the “Employee Spotlight” of Newsletter in Dec. 2014, it said that “This past quarter alone we filled more than thirty new positions including process engineers, mechanics and transportation experts”.

2.     In the “Employee Spotlight” of Newsletter in Dec. 2015, it said that “And even though the hours are sometimes long and hard on the road”. It seems that some employees in Kasios would work at night and might pass through the park. The long working hours could indicate the expanding of the company Kasios.

 

With the findings in the MC1 (Figure 3), we have found that some 4-axle trucks were driving during the night, and the route is fixed every time. Besides, these 4-axle trucks have passed some gates which are not allowed to get through.

We infer that these trucks may be used to carry goods and materials. This message matches the news in the Semi-Annual Newsletter in Dec. 2015, in which a transportation worker said that he sometimes worked in some pretty odd hours. And the route passes through the park, which may affect the Rose-crested Blue Pipit.

Figure 3. The system of the MC1. Some 4-axle trucks will pass through the Gate from 0:00 to 6:00 in some days (the blue lines in the Timeline View). The view in the top right shows the routes of these trucks. The view in the bottom right is Gantt plot. In this view, each column is a sensor and each row represents a vehicle. Therefore, this view could show the recorded sequences of sensors for each vehicle.

Moreover, in the MC2, we found that most peaks of reading of Methylosmolene showed up during the evenings (Figure 4). It seems that the company is secretly discharging this harmful chemical.

Figure 4. The timeline shows the emission of the Methylosmolene.

As the increase of the productive scale, Kasios have caused the larger amount of release of Chlorodinine.

According to the property of this chemical, the environment and the ecosystem of the Lekagule Preserve could be damaged. The consequences of the damage, as we observed in the MC3 (Figure 5), include the reduce of vegetation cover, flooding, eutrophication in the lake and other water bodies, mineral deposits, etc. The pollution of high density of metal material in the lake might also be caused by the damage.

 

Figure 5. Detected events in the MC3. Subfigures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are flooding, eutrophication, fire, pollution and urbanization respectively.

 

 

In conclusion, we think that the company Kaisos Office Furniture should be responsible for the impactful damages in Lekagule Preserve. It’s expansion and the following increase discharge of harmful chemical Chlorodinine have caused severe consequences to the environment, especially the livings in the Rose-crested Blue Pipit.

 

2      Provide a timeline that comprehensively describes the relevant activities in Mistford, the Industrial Park, and the Preserve that helps concisely describe the events identified in Question 1.  Please limit your response to 1000 words and 6 images. 

 

We use a timeline to summarize the relevant activities in Mistford from Semi-Annual Newsletter (Figure 6). From these newsletter, we found that the company Kasios Office Furniture was very active and expanded in early 2014. From the line chart showing the changes of companies’ quarterly earnings per share, we could find that the price of the Kasios Office Furniture was dropped in 2014, and then increased from about 2015.

Figure 6. The timeline shows activities extracted from Semi-Annual Newsletter

 

From the semi-annual newsletter, we also could summarize some annual activities. During June, there are softball game, Boonsong Lekagul Clearnup, Animal Rescue Annual Benefit Bash and food. During December, there are annual holiday tradition, fishing and food drives. Overfishing may affect the ecological environment of the lake.

 

From the timelines describing the chemical emission, we found some interesting patterns. With the findings in the MC2, we inferred that the most Methylosmolene is let out by the company Kasios Office Furniture. From the summarization in the Figure 7, we found that most peaks of reading of Methylosmolene show up during evenings. It seems that the company is secretly discharging this harmful chemical.

Figure 7. The timeline summarizes the emission of the Methylosmolene.

3      How confident are you in your hypothesis? What factors impact your confidence in your hypothesis? What additional information would help strengthen your hypothesis? Please limit your response to 500 words and 3 images.

 

The hypothesis is made with the systems developed in the MC1, MC2 and MC3. At the same time, we find related evidences from the semi-annual newsletter and mini challenges.

1.     The company Kasios was expanding.

a)        In the “Employee Spotlight” of Newsletter in Dec. 2014, it showed that “This past quarter alone we filled more than thirty new positions including process engineers, mechanics and transportation experts”, which meant that the company was expanding.

b)        In the “Employee Spotlight” of Newsletter in Dec. 2015, it showed that “And even though the hours are sometimes long and hard on the road”. It seems that the employees in Kasios would work at night and may pass through the park.

2.     People is fishing in the Boomsong Lake.

In the “Employee Spotlight” of Newsletter in Dec. 2014, it showed that “Her skills earned her the Championship in the 2014 MIP Charity Fishing Tournament”.  Overfishing may affect the environment.

3.     From the finding in the MC2, there is pollution in Boomsong Lake in Dec. 2016, which may be caused by people`s activities. And the pollution would affect the Rose-crested Blue Pipit.

4.     From the findings in the MC31, some transportation workers in the Kasios drove the trucks pass through the park during the night. These activities would affect the environment.

5.     We align the map in the MC1 and MC3, and find that these two maps are matched (Figure 7). In the MC3, we found that there is pollution during 2016 (Figure 1-2, a region in the red circle) and there was a fire at near the camping place between Aug 24th, 2014 and June, 24th, 2015 (Figure 1-3, a region in the red circle).

Figure 7. Align the maps in the MC1 and MC3. The aligning method is that: the length of the map (651 * 651 pixels) in MC3 is 3000/35 * 651 = 55800 feet, in which the length of the lake from north to south is 3000 feet, and the related area in the map has 35 pixels. The length of the map in MC1 is 12 * 5280 = 63360 feet. Therefore, the ratio of two map is 55800:63360. We fix the size of the map in MC1 and expand the size of the map in MC3 to 63360/55800 = 1.13548. We also translate the map in MC3 with 3 degree clockwise.

Therefore, we could infer that the Kasios Office Furniture should be responsible for he impactful activities in Lekagule Preserve. At the same time, some activities in the park would affect the environment.

 

 

4      What are your proposed next steps? Do you have a course of action to correct the problems in the Lekagul Preserve and help the Rose-crested Blue Pipit?  Please limit your response to 500 words and 3 images.

 

Here are some suggestions:

a)        We should limit the Kasios Office Furniture`s production, as its production would produce harmful chemicals.

b)        We suggest that the trucks should circumvent the Boomsong Lake to avoid disturbances of the livings.

c)        We should make some restriction to limit the release of harmful chemicals.

d)        We should add more sensors to monitor the emission of each company.

e)        We should limit the activities in the Mistford Industrial Park. Too many activities would always affect the Rose-crested Blue Pipit, such as the fishing activity.

f)         We should reduce the number of visitors of the park, plant more trees and protect the water in the preserve.

g)        The preserve is between the residential and industrial area. Maybe we could change the place of the factory area or we could set a specific road for factories` transportation.

Figure 8. The position of residential area (red circle in the north) and factory area (red circle in the south).