Case Study: Customizing Siren Link Charts for Enhanced Investigative Intelligence Sharing

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Summary

In this episode from the “Siren Video Bytes” series, Davide Paoletti PhD, Data Scientist at Siren, demonstrates how investigators can customize link charts to enhance their clarity and effectiveness when sharing findings with team members. Link charts are visual representations that display connections between various records in an investigation, allowing teams to better understand relationships between suspects, objects, and events.

Challenge

One of the primary challenges investigators and analysts face today is effectively communicating and sharing the intelligence they discover during their investigations. Standard link charts can become complex and difficult to interpret, especially when dealing with multiple data types and relationships. Without proper visual cues and customization, critical information might get lost or overlooked when shared with other team members. This communication gap can potentially hinder collaborative investigative work and slow down the decision-making process. 

The video specifically targets Analysts, Investigators, and Command Staff who need to tailor charts to effectively communicate findings with their teams, whether working on criminal investigations or trying to make sense of complex data relationships.

Solution Implementation

In this short, practical video, Davide demonstrates a methodical approach to customizing a Siren link chart to enhance its clarity and effectiveness. Working with a typical investigative link chart displaying individuals, cards, crimes, and messages, he illustrates several key customization techniques:

1. Highlighting Key Elements: Davide selects the main suspect (Roger) and modifies his record to make it stand out. This includes increasing the node size to 4, adding a thick dark black border, and appending “primary suspect” to the label. These visual cues immediately draw attention to the most significant person in the investigation.
2. Adding New Elements: During the investigation, when new information emerges (such as a transaction between Roger and Zach), Davide demonstrates how to add this new record to the chart. He creates a transaction node with a value of $3,000, ensuring that important new findings can be seamlessly integrated into the ongoing investigation.
3. Creating Meaningful Connections: To clearly show relationships between entities, Davide adds connection lines between the transaction and the relevant individuals. This visually represents the flow of money between suspects, creating a clearer picture of their relationships and manually adds these connections to visualize the relationship.
4. Prioritizing Visual Hierarchy: Finally, Davide increases the size of the transaction node to 4, ensuring that this significant piece of evidence stands out visually in the chart. This emphasizes the importance of the financial connection in the investigation.

“Easy customization can really help to visually understand, explain and share complex relationships.”

Results and Metrics

Through these customization techniques, the Siren link chart transforms from a standard visualization into a more intuitive and communicative tool. The enhanced chart clearly distinguishes the primary suspect from other individuals, highlights significant transactions, and visually represents the relationships between different entities in the investigation. 

While specific metrics aren’t directly mentioned in the video, the improvements in visual clarity and information hierarchy suggest significant enhancements in the chart’s communicative effectiveness, potentially leading to faster investigation insights and more efficient team collaboration.

Conclusions

Customizing Siren link charts provides investigators with a powerful way to communicate complex findings more effectively. By implementing simple visual enhancements such as size adjustments, border modifications, and label additions, analysts can create more intuitive visualizations that highlight key information and relationships. As Davide notes, these straightforward customization options help teams “visually understand, explain and share complex relationships,” enabling more effective communication throughout the investigative process. 

For organizations using Siren’s platform, mastering these techniques through the weekly “Siren Video Bytes” series can significantly enhance analytical capabilities and team collaboration.