Johannes Luderschmidt’s final master’s thesis was the creation of a multi-touch capable visualization tool to be used in law enforcement that he called ‘Vispol’. Targeted for ‘special situations’ like hostage scenarios or bank heists, the system is meant to work as a centralized data consolidation and analysis platform for the multitude of data sources police have access to.
In Vispol a person is represented by a circle and an object is represented by a square. Persons can be connected with other persons and objects and vice versa. A person consists out of a central circle and ten wedges around this circle. The central circle contains information about the type of person (culprit, victim, not involved), the sex and the name of the person. The upper five wedges can hold information represented by an icon about the age, the health state, the armature, a potential criminal file and the whereabout of the person. The lower five wedges can hold various information like notes, questions or photos of the person.
Beyond creation of the tool, the remainder of the project is in use case analysis and user evaluation. No word about that on his site, but hopefully something will be released soon.
