Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 8, numbers 3 and 4, 2015 // View article

Assisting the Detection of Spatio-Temporal Patterns in Temporally Transformed Map Animation

Authors:
Salla Multimäki
Paula Ahonen-Rainio

Keywords: map animation; cognitive load; temporal transformation; equal density; user testing.

Abstract:
Animated maps are widely used in visualizing the temporal aspect of geographical data, even though their effectiveness depends on multiple factors and is far from obvious. Especially when the temporal structure of a dataset is irregular, new methods for exploratory analysis are required. This paper presents a novel method to manipulate map animations by transforming the temporal dimension so that events are located in equal intervals into a time period. This temporal transformation applies the idea of spatial equal density transformation, which is familiar from cartography, in order to ease the cognitive load on a user caused by the temporal congestion of the dataset. A user test with a transformed animation of two different datasets indicated that the transformed animation is useful in revealing spatio-temporal patterns, which could not be detected from an original, untransformed animation. The transformed animations were found insightful and useful by the test users. These findings indicate that a temporally transformed animation would be a useful addition to a toolbox for exploratory analysis of spatio-temporal data.

Pages: 168 to 177

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2015. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2015

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x