Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Space, Time, Activity and Human Error:
Using Space-Time Constraints
to Interrogate the Degree of Uncertainty
in Survey-Based Movement Datasets
Qian Sun, Pip Forer, Jinfeng Zhao and David Simmons
Abstract Tourist activity is generally frenetic even while seemingly being
relaxed. A significant change has been the rise in free, independent travellers who
choose to tour autonomously and visit multiple destinations to their own
schedules. This development has had major ramifications, impacting on local
environments and communities by stimulating their economies but simultaneously
demanding new facilities, displacing certain activities, and transmitting ideas and
even disease as tourists contacting with their hosts becomes wider and more
intense. Such tourism is quintessentially tied up with a dynamic geography of
movement that generates demand and supply at different spatial scales. A growing
recognition of these outcomes has highlighted the significance of movement data
as a resource for understanding many aspects of human and animal activity and
their geographies. Consequently, research interest has accelerated on the back of
enhanced capabilities for tracking individual entities' movements, typically with
GPS sensors that collect individual time-tagged locational data cheaply and
accurately. Prior to this, most movement studies used a paper-based survey
methodology for data capture which was reliant on respondents' recall of move-
ment or the keeping of a diary. Unlike the GPS, this process permitted data capture
