Robert Weibel

Discovering relative motion patterns in groups of moving point objects

Technological advances in position‐aware devices are leading to a wealth of data documenting motion. The integration of spatio‐temporal data‐mining techniques in GIScience is an important research field to overcome the limitations of static Geographic Information Systems with respect to the emerging volumes of data describing dynamics. This paper presents a generic geographic knowledge discovery approach for exploring the motion of moving point objects, the prime modelling construct to represent GPS tracked animals, people, or vehicles. The approach is based on the concept of geospatial lifelines and presents a formalism for describing different types of lifeline patterns that are generalizable for many application domains. Such lifeline patterns allow the identification and quantification of remarkable individual motion behaviour, events of distinct group motion behaviour, so as to relate the motion of individuals to groups. An application prototype featuring novel data‐mining algorithms has been implemented and tested with two case studies: tracked soccer players and data points representing political entities moving in an abstract ideological space. In both case studies, a set of non‐trivial and meaningful motion patterns could be identified, for instance highlighting the characteristic ‘offside trap’ behaviour in the first case and identifying trendsetting districts anticipating a political transformation in the latter case.

A review and conceptual framework of automated map generalization

Abstract This paper reviews the prospects of computer-assisted generalization of spatial data. Generalization as a general human activity is first considered in a broad context and map generalization is defined as a special variant of spatial modelling. It is then argued that in computer-assisted generalization, the spatial modelling process can be simulated only by strategies based on understanding and not by a mere sequence of operational processing steps. A conceptual framework for knowledge-based generalization is then presented which can be broken down into five steps: structure recognition, process recognition, process modelling, process execution and display. With reference to the goals of map generalization we identified tasks of statistical and cartographic generalization. The use of these types of tasks is discussed in relation to the concepts of digital landscape models (DLM) and digital cartographic models (DCM). A literature review is then presented in the context of this conceptual framework...

Spatial information retrieval and geographical ontologies an overview of the SPIRIT project

A large proportion of the resources available on the world-wide web refer to information that may be regarded as geographically located. Thus most activities and enterprises take place in one or more places on the Earths surface and there is a wealth of survey data, images, maps and reports that relate to specific places or regions. Despite the prevalence of geographical context, existing web search facilities are poorly adapted to help people find information that relates to a particular location. When the name of a place is typed into a typical search engine, web pages that include that name in their text will be retrieved, but it is likely that many resources that are also associated with the place may not be retrieved. Thus resources relating to places that are inside the specified place may not be found, nor may be places that are nearby or that are equivalent but referred to by another name. Specification of geographical context frequently requires the use of spatial relationships concerning distance or containment for example, yet such terminology cannot be understood by existing search engines. Here we provide a brief survey of existing facilities for geographical information retrieval on the web, before describing a set of tools and techniques that are being developed in the project SPIRIT : Spatially-Aware Information Retrieval on the Internet (funded by European Commission Framework V Project IST-2001-35047).

Revealing the physics of movement: Comparing the similarity of movement characteristics of different types of moving objects

We propose a segmentation and feature extraction method for trajectories of moving objects. The methodology consists of three stages: trajectory data preparation; global descriptors computation; and local feature extraction. The key element is an algorithm that decomposes the profiles generated for different movement parameters (velocity, acceleration, etc.) using variations in sinuosity and deviation from the median line. Hence, the methodology enables the extraction of local movement features in addition to global ones that are essential for modeling and analyzing moving objects in applications such as trajectory classification, simulation and extraction of movement patterns. As a case study, we show how the method can be employed in classifying trajectory data generated by unknown moving objects and assigning them to known types of moving objects, whose movement characteristics have been previously learned. We have conducted a series of experiments that provide evidence about the similarities and differences that exist among different types of moving objects. The experiments show that the methodology can be successfully applied in automatic transport mode detection. It is also shown that eye-movement data cannot be successfully used as a proxy of full-body movement of humans, or vehicles.

An Approach for the Classification of Urban Building Structures Based on Discriminant Analysis Techniques

Recognition of urban structures is of interest in cartography and urban modelling. While a broad range of typologies of urban patterns have been published in the last century, relatively little research on the automated recognition of such structures exists. This work presents a sample-based approach for the recognition of five types of urban structures: (1) inner city areas, (2) industrial and commercial areas, (3) urban areas, (4) suburban areas and (5) rural areas. The classification approach is based only on the characterisation of building geometries with morphological measures derived from perceptual principles of Gestalt psychology. Thereby, size, shape and density of buildings are evaluated. After defining the research questions we develop the classification methodology and evaluate the approach with respect to several aspects. The experiments focus on the impact of different classification algorithms, correlations and contributions of measures, parameterisation of buffer-based indices, and mode filtering. In addition to that, we investigate the influence of scale and regional factors. The results show that the chosen approach is generally successful. It turns out that scale, algorithm parameterisation, and regional heterogeneity of building structures substantially influence the classification performance.

Movement similarity assessment using symbolic representation of trajectories

This article describes a novel approach for finding similar trajectories, using trajectory segmentation based on movement parameters (MPs) such as speed, acceleration, or direction. First, a segmentation technique is applied to decompose trajectories into a set of segments with homogeneous characteristics with respect to a particular MP. Each segment is assigned to a movement parameter class (MPC), representing the behavior of the MP. Accordingly, the segmentation procedure transforms a trajectory to a sequence of class labels, that is, a symbolic representation. A modified version of edit distance called normalized weighted edit distance (NWED) is introduced as a similarity measure between different sequences. As an application, we demonstrate how the method can be employed to cluster trajectories. The performance of the approach is assessed in two case studies using real movement datasets from two different application domains, namely, North Atlantic Hurricane trajectories and GPS tracks of couriers in London. Three different experiments have been conducted that respond to different facets of the proposed techniques and that compare our NWED measure to a related method.

A Conceptual Framework for Uncertainty Investigation in Map‐based Land Cover Change Modelling

Uncertainty research represents a research stream of high interest within the community of geographical information science. Its elements, terminology and typology are still under strong discussion and adopted methods for analysis are currently under intensive development. This paper presents a conceptual framework for systematic investigation of uncertainty which occurs in applications of land cover change modelling in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based on historical map data. Historical, in this context, means the map is old enough to allow identification of changes in landscape elements of interest, such as vegetation. To date such analyses are rarely conducted or not satisfactorily carried out, despite the fact that historical map data represent a potentially rich information source. The general validity and practicability of the framework for related applications is demonstrated with reference to one example in which forest cover change in Switzerland is investigated. The conceptual model consists of three domains in which main potential sources of uncertainty are systematically exposed. Existing links between data quality research and uncertainty are investigated to access the complex nature of uncertainty and to characterise the most suitable concepts for analysis. In accordance with these concepts appropriate methods and procedures are suggested to assess uncertainty in each domain. One domain is the production-oriented amount of uncertainty which is inherent in the historical map. Vagueness and ambiguity represent suitable concepts for analysis. Transformation-oriented uncertainty as the second domain occurs owing to editing and processing of digital data. Thereby, the suitable concept of uncertainty is error. The third domain is the application-oriented uncertainty which occurs in comparing semantically different data. This domain relates to multi-temporal discord which assumes the assessment of ‘equi-temporal’ ambiguity and is thus connected to the production-oriented domain. The framework provides an estimation of the overall amount of uncertainty. This can be linked to subsequent assessment of ‘fitness for use’. Thus the model provides a practicable and systematic approach to access the complex nature of uncertainty in the scope of land cover change modelling.

Models and Experiments for Adaptive Computer-Assisted Terrain Generalization

The project described in this article had two primary objectives: to design a strategy for terrain generalization that is adaptive to different terrain types, scales, and map purposes, and to implement and evaluate some components of this approach to assess its potential. The strategy includes three different generalization methods: a global filtering procedure, a selective (iterative) filtering method, and a heuristic approach based on the generalization of the terrains structure lines. For a given generalization problem that is constrained by the terrain character, map objective, scale, graphic limits, and data quality, the appropriate technique is selected through structure and process recognition procedures. Some of the key components of the strategy have been implemented and some experiments were conducted. Other parts were covered by proposing models that could serve as implementation guidelines. Our work was intended to break ground for future research. Recommendations for appropriate parameter se...

Analysis and visualisation of movement: an interdisciplinary review

The processes that cause and influence movement are one of the main points of enquiry in movement ecology. However, ecology is not the only discipline interested in movement: a number of information sciences are specialising in analysis and visualisation of movement data. The recent explosion in availability and complexity of movement data has resulted in a call in ecology for new appropriate methods that would be able to take full advantage of the increasingly complex and growing data volume. One way in which this could be done is to form interdisciplinary collaborations between ecologists and experts from information sciences that analyse movement. In this paper we present an overview of new movement analysis and visualisation methodologies resulting from such an interdisciplinary research network: the European COST Action “MOVE - Knowledge Discovery from Moving Objects” (http://www.move-cost.info). This international network evolved over four years and brought together some 140 researchers from different disciplines: those that collect movement data (out of which the movement ecology was the largest represented group) and those that specialise in developing methods for analysis and visualisation of such data (represented in MOVE by computational geometry, geographic information science, visualisation and visual analytics). We present MOVE achievements and at the same time put them in ecological context by exploring relevant ecological themes to which MOVE studies do or potentially could contribute.

Saliency and semantic processing: Extracting forest cover from historical topographic maps

A multi-step recognition process is developed for extracting compound forest cover information from manually produced scanned historical topographic maps of the 19th century. This information is a unique data source for GIS-based land cover change modeling. Based on salient features in the image the steps to be carried out are character recognition, line detection and structural analysis of forest symbols. Semantic expansion implying the meanings of objects is applied for final forest cover extraction. The procedure resulted in high accuracies of 94% indicating a potential for automatic and robust extraction of forest cover from larger areas.