Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Movements in Space-Times (Plural)
This research is concerned with geovisual analytics and their application to data
sets representing the movement of individual or multiple sentient objects. Its goals
are threefold. One is to illustrate the use of such analytics to enhance knowledge of
the nature of large scale or individual movement patterns and so enhance our
ability to understand and describe dynamic geographies. An example based on
mundane human urban activity patterns and a customized visualisation tool set
deployed in a leading GIS (Esri
2009
) will be used to approach this goal. A second
goal is to note the parallels and divergences between studies of human movement
and those of animal behaviour, using a modified version of the same tool set to
visualise movements of common brushtail possum (Trichosurus vulpecula)asan
example. The final goal is to compare these two contexts and reflect on the nature
of the relationship between tool set and data set when seeking to provide a useful
framework for generic geovisual analytics across rich data sets from a variety of
species and geographies.
To address these goals the paper is in four parts. The first introduces the
challenge of visual analytics with sentient movement and the tool set used in the
paper and implemented by the first author (Zhao et al.
2008
). This toolkit is named
Ringmap. This section also briefly describes the 'rich' data set gathered from a
sample of the citizens of Halifax Nova Scotia in 1971. 'Rich' in this context
basically means that the complete data contains information on space, time and
activity of each individual over a study period as well as a detailed digital rep-
resentation of the geography in which movement occurs. Most importantly the
section summarises the role of time geography in construction of both the data set
and the visualisation tools. (The book format limits the number of coloured
examples of visualisations but links to the web book site [book web site URL]
provide further background).
Part two moves on to include an animal perspective, identifying one proposed
research framework for understanding animal movement, and commenting on its
crossover with Hägerstrand's view of the factors inspiring and controlling
movement and the relative value of the space-time aquarium in visualisation.
Part three presents recent work on possums, using a modified version of the
Ringmap suite of representations tailored to the nature of the lifestyle and ambient
geography of the possum. The visualisations and the interpretations that can be
extracted from them are discussed in more detail, as is the rationale for the
adjustments made to the parameters of Ringmap for use with possums.
Part four concludes with a review of the Ringmap project to date and a
reflection on the relationship between tool set, data set and conceptual frameworks
across a range of lifestyles and geographies.
