Data visualization of crime data using immersive virtual reality

Abstract

Visualization explores quantitative content of data with human intuition and plays an integral part in the data mining process. When the data is big there are different analysis methods and approaches used to find inherent patterns and relationships. However, sometimes a human in loop intervention is needed to find new connections and relationships that the existing algorithms cannot provide. Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) provides the “sense of presence” and gives the ability to discover new connections and relationships by visual inspection. The goal of this work is to investigate the merging of immersive VR and data science for advanced visualization. VR and immersive visualization involve interplay between novel technology and human perception to generate insight into both. We propose to use immersive VR for exploring the higher dimensionality and abstraction that are associated with big data. VR can use an abstract representation of high-dimensional data in support of advanced scientific visualization. This paper demonstrates the data visualization tool with real-time feed of Baltimore crime data in immersive environment, non-immersive environment, and mobile environment. We have combined virtual reality interaction techniques and 3D geographical information representation to enhance the visualization of situational impacts as shown in Figure 1. The data visualization tool is developed using the Unity gaming engine. We have presented bar graphs with oculus controller to combine the bar chart visualization with a zooming feature that allows users to view the details more effectively. The Oculus Touch headset allows the users to navigate and experience the environment with full immersion. Oculus Touch controllers also give haptic feedback to the user when using objects such as laser pointer. We are interested in extending our VR data visualization tools to enable collaborative, multi-user data exploration and to explore the impact of VR on collaborative analytics tasks, in comparison with traditional 2D visualizations. The benefits of our proposed work include providing a data visualization tool for immersive visualization and visual analysis. We also suggest key features that immersive analytics can provide with situational awareness and in loop human intervention for decision making.