VEHICLE: Validation and exploration of the hierarchical integration of conflict event data

Abstract

The exploration of large-scale conflicts, as well as their causes and effects, is an important aspect of socio-political analysis. Since event data related to major conflicts are usually obtained from different sources, researchers developed a semi-automatic matching algorithm to integrate event data of different origins into one comprehensive dataset using hierarchical taxonomies. The validity of the corresponding integration results is not easy to assess since the results depend on user-defined input parameters and the relationships between the original data sources. However, only rudimentary visualization techniques have been used so far to analyze the results, allowing no trustworthy validation or exploration of how the final dataset is composed. To overcome this problem, we developed VEHICLE, a web-based tool to validate and explore the results of the hierarchical integration. For the design, we collaborated with a domain expert to identify the underlying domain problems and derive a task and workflow description. The tool combines both traditional and novel visual analysis techniques, employing statistical and map-based depictions as well as advanced interaction techniques. We showed the usefulness of VEHICLE in two case studies and by conducting an evaluation together with conflict researchers, confirming domain hypotheses and generating new insights.