Hypertext structures for investigative teams

Abstract

Investigations such as police investigations, intelligence analysis, and investigative journalism involves a number of complex knowledge management tasks. Investigative teams collect, process, and analyze information related to a specific target to create products that can be disseminated to their customers. This paper presents a novel hypertext-based tool that supports a human-centered, target-centric model for investigative teams. The model divides investigative tasks into five overall processes: acquisition, synthesis, sense-making, dissemination, and cooperation. The developed tool provides more comprehensive support for synthesis and sense-making tasks than existing tools.