Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1 A screenshot from
the animated map; in the
upper right-hand corner
time is displayed down to
the accuracy of a month and
in the
lower right-hand
corner
the cumulative
number of detonations
performed can be found; the
numbers next to the flags
represent the cumulative
numbers of detonations
sorted by country
(Hashimoto
2003
)
detonation (except those announced by North Korea). The animation was chosen
because it is well-known and freely available on the web (see references for the
internet address). The spatial aspect is communicated through a world map and the
temporal aspect through the fact that it is an animation (every second is one month),
through beeps (one beep for every month, a different beep for the start of every
year), and through textual information. As time goes by, the detonations appear and
disappear as points on the map. The points are color-coded to show to which
country they belong. The total and country-wise cumulative number of detonations
are also given at every moment in time. Figure
1
is a screenshot of the animation.
In this study distance, direction and topology in space, and distance and topology
in time are considered as basic relations. Distance and direction are continuous
quantities defined in relation to some frame of reference. Topology, on the other
hand, is defined as those properties of geometrical figures that are invariant under
continuous deformation (McDonnell and Kemp
1996
). As time is one-dimensional,
direction in time is redundant information which can be read from positive and
negative distances in time. Therefore, direction in time is excluded here.
Results
The reverse engineering that led to the results of this study was not a straightfor-
ward process but rather iterative, the final diagrams being the result of many
changes. During the work a conceptual framework describing the building blocks
of the insights evolved. The conceptual framework gave a common structure to the
dissection of the insights, and it helps to provide an understanding of the idea
behind the dissection of the insights. It is not a fully evolved theory of insight
making in spatio-temporal analysis, though. This framework is presented below,
followed by the four dissected insights.
