Movement beyond the snapshot – Dynamic analysis of geospatial lifelines

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2007.08.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Geographical Information Science is challenged by an unprecedented increase in the availability of tracking data related to human and animal movement, typically captured through location-aware portable devices such as GPS receivers. Capture of trajectory data at fine temporal and spatial granularities has allowed with the representation of detailed geospatial lifelines, opening new options for analysis. In this respect we propose a dynamic perspective to analysis which, in contrast to summary trajectory statistics on speed, motion azimuth or sinuosity, that refers to the variability of motion properties throughout the developing lifeline. Four specific lifeline context operators are identified in this paper: ‘instantaneous’, ‘interval’, ‘episodal’ and ‘total’. Using this framework, we discuss standardisations that integrate the extended set of motion descriptors within various temporal and spatial frames of reference and the proposed lifeline context operators and standardisations are illustrated using high resolution trajectory data obtained from homing pigeons carrying miniature global positioning devices.

Introduction

Opportunities to trace individual movement have grown in tandem with the development of electronic transaction networks, location-aware devices and surveillance systems, all capable of tracking people (Mountain & Raper, 2001b), animals (Hulbert, 2001) or vehicles (Wolfson, Sistla, Chamberlain, & Yesha, 1999). Generically, this development has offered an opportunity to move ‘beyond the snapshot’ (Chrisman, 1998) with respect to our understanding of processes involving individual movement. Specifically, the recent arrival of devices capable of the low cost capture of high resolution locational data now allows the widespread construction of individually-based geospatial lifelines (Mark, 1998). Such individual lifelines presage a new era of movement analysis (Eagle & Pentland, 2005) in which scientists from various research fields previously hampered by sparse and random movement observations can now be hard on the heels of their subjects as they move in space and time.

Yet while there is a growing commitment of resources to the large-scale recording of paths, the analysis commonly conducted with trajectory data remains fairly limited in scope and sophistication (Wolfer, Madani, Valenti, & Lipp, 2001). In disciplines outside of geography which do not commonly use geospatial methods or theory this may be due to a lack of awareness and understanding of the power of spatial analysis and GISystems, and within geography GIScience’s’ fetish for the static may be a factor (Raper, 2002). What ever the cause, GIScience faces a challenge to develop sophisticated analytical tools that integrate geography’s spatial awareness with its long-term experience in processing large spatio-temporal data bases. This paper discusses opportunities and shortcomings of analysing lifeline data from a GIScience perspective, specifically in the situation where three spatial dimensions are involved and where movement is largely unfettered.

Clearly, the representation and analysis of geospatial lifelines challenge the GIScience community with respect to procedures for aggregation, generalisation, uncertainty and interpolation. Aggregation and generalisation of lifeline data can be considered to be important tools for coping with the voluminous outputs of movement-related agent-based simulations, for example with respect to emergency planning (Batty, Desyllas, & Duxbury, 2003) or transportation planning (Nagel, Esser, & Rickert, 2000). Uncertainty and generalisation of lifeline data is of interest for designers of location based services (LBS) analysing the lifelines of people tracked by location aware devices (Duckham et al., 2003, Mountain and Raper, 2001a, Smyth, 2001). The more basic derivation of actual motion descriptors, such as speed, motion azimuth, or path sinuosity, also merits attention. Such descriptors build, the underlying basis for attempts to investigate the similarity of trajectories (Sinha & Mark, 2005), which is an important task in spatio-temporal data mining and geographic knowledge discovery (Miller & Han, 2001), and may well pay dividends in the fields of spatialisation (Skupin & Fabrikant, 2003), eye-movement analysis (Fabrikant, 2005) and the evolution of semantic relationships in cognitive spaces (Pike & Gahegan, 2003).

Lifeline data analysis is also relevant to a range of applied research fields outside of geography itself or in cognate areas, such as animal biology and biogeography. In behavioural ecology, the key factors in avian navigation are still not completely understood (Bonadonna et al., 2005, Wiltschko and Wiltschko, 2003), but Steiner et al. (2000) identify the analysis of the homing routes of racing pigeons as the optimal method for almost any study in this field. Advanced path analysis is furthermore considered to be a crucial obligation for the interpretation of behavioural experiments conducted with genetically modified animals, for example for water maze experiments with mice exploring spatial learning (Wolfer et al., 2001). Similar analysis is also of increasing interest in agricultural science, contributing to the development, for example, of optimal grazing strategies for cattle with respect to livestock management (Ganskopp, 2001). Research involving video surveillance (Ng, 2001, Porikli, 2004, Shim and Chang, 2003) or sports scene analysis (Moore, Whigham, Holt, Aldridge, & Hodge, 2003) are further examples where disciplines exhibit deep interests in individual trajectories.

The distinctive feature of high resolution tracking data is that they allow the tracking of individuals along an actual movement path, leaving little need for interpretation between sparse observation points. Thus, at almost every instant along the lifeline we can robustly determine the individual’s current movement properties, such as speed, acceleration, motion azimuth, path sinuosity, as well as generate even more complex motion properties. Section 2 reviews work in this area, and elaborates the nature of the existing analytical tool set. In Section 3.1 we propose lifeline context operators to derive motion descriptors along dense trajectories, and adopt a dynamic analysis perspective for this. Section 3.2 rehearses a number of well known motion descriptors such as speed or motion azimuth, and introduces additional measures before discussing their computation as lifeline context operators. Section 3.3 explores the wide variety of analytical options that can be deployed by applying various standardisations for statistical analysis or using different aggregations of the tracking data. To illustrate these possibilities the trajectories of homing pigeons are identified as a research milieu (Section 4), and data from this area are utilised to demonstrate and critique the techniques (Section 5). The paper concludes in Section 6 with a brief review of prospects.

Section snippets

Related work

There is ample research on deriving overall descriptors of movement trajectories, such as time total, flying time, airline distance, net displacement, flight path, flight speed, bias from airline (e.g. Berger et al., 1999, Steiner et al., 2000, Turchin, 1998, Wolfer et al., 2001). In avian navigation research, where detailed tracking was impossible until recently, the recording of the vanishing bearing of homing pigeons was used as a ‘whole flight’ indicator, since this direction was believed

Methods

This section introduces a set of analytical approaches for lifeline data. Mark (1998, p. 12) defines a geospatial lifeline as a “continuous set of positions occupied in space over some time period. Geospatial lifeline data consists of discrete space–time observations of a geospatial lifeline, describing an individual’s location in geographic space at regular or irregular intervals”. All methods introduced in this section apply for a data set consisting of n individuals, mn fixes of the form (x,

Examples

This section illustrates the methodology introduced above using data emerging from an interdisciplinary study in behavioural ecology, investigating the navigation of homing pigeons. Given a data set of a total of approximately mn = 30,000 fixes of n = 54 individual pigeon flight trajectories (Guilbert, Dennis, & Walker, unpublished).

Discussion

This paper has identified a framework for enriching the toolset available for analysing densely sampled lifelines, and has explored ways to implement a growing range of movement parameters within that broad framework. These have covered movement properties of lifelines already deployed in other research, such as speed, movement azimuth, turning angles, or sinuosity, as well as additional measures and standardisations. In Section 3 we showed that there are, for many movement descriptors, more

Conclusions and outlook

Acknowledging the emerging opportunities for the mass analysis of individual movement data, an eclectic set of disciplines interested in movement have recently shown a growing interest in dynamic spatio-temporal analytical methods for trajectory data. These disciplines include geography, GIScience, data base research, animal behaviour research, surveillance and security analysis, transport analysis and market research.

In this paper we have adopted the concept of spatial context operators, often

Acknowledgements

Author’s current work is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, grant no. PBZH2-110315. The authors wish to thank David O’Sullivan who provided valuable comments on the presented research and previous drafts of the manuscript.

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