Database Reference
In-Depth Information
17
Conclusions
Chiara Renso, Stefano Spaccapietra, and Esteban Zimanyi
Mobility data management and analysis have emerged in the last decade as a
very active research domain, promoted by academic events (e.g., several ded-
icated conferences, journal issues, and seminars), international R&D projects
(e.g., GeoPKDD,
1
MODAP,
2
MOVE
3
), and industrial initiatives (e.g., the mul-
tiple mobility contests that have been organized recently by several organiza-
tions). This topic documented the richness and significance of the main research
achievements in a variety of domains related to mobility data management and
showed how several application domains have already benefited from these
achievements. It also highlighted two very important areas for new applications
related to most advanced technological environments, namely social networks
and network sciences. Yet there is much room for further work in all aspects
of movement analysis. The following concluding remarks aim at showing some
further developments that are expected within the short-term future and that
build on the mobility technologies discussed in this topic.
Basic Trajectory Framework
A first evidence is that new research projects are needed to expand the scope
and coverage of mobility studies, currently mainly restricted to the limited set of
basic concepts described in the first chapter of this topic. For example, analyzing
movement of deforming areas (e.g., floods, pollution clouds, storms, diseases)
has received relatively little attention up to now. Yet its economic importance is
rapidly increasing as the disastrous effects of natural phenomena linked to cur-
rent climate change are influencing government policies to promote better anal-
yses of such phenomena. Several types of movement remain to be investigated,
1
http://www.geopkdd.eu/
2
http://www.modap.org/
3
http://www.move-cost.info/
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