Analytical queries on semantic trajectories using graph databases

This article studies the analysis of moving object data collected by location‐aware devices, such as GPS, using graph databases. Such raw trajectories can be transformed into so‐called semantic trajectories, which are sequences of stops that occur at “places of interest.” Trajectory data analysis can be enriched if spatial and non‐spatial contextual data associated with the moving objects are taken into account, and aggregation of trajectory data can reveal hidden patterns within such data. When trajectory data are stored in relational databases, there is an “impedance mismatch” between the representation and storage models. Graphs in which the nodes and edges are annotated with properties are gaining increasing interest to model a variety of networks. Therefore, this article proposes the use of graph databases (Neo4j in this case) to represent and store trajectory data, which can thus be analyzed at different aggregation levels using graph query languages (Cypher, for Neo4j). Through a real‐world public data case study, the article shows that trajectory queries are expressed more naturally on the graph‐based representation than over the relational alternative, and perform better in many typical cases.     

CityGML goes mobile: application of large 3D CityGML models on smartphones

CityGML, a semantic information model for digital/virtual city models has become quite popular in various scenarios. While the data format is still actively under development, it is already supported by different software solutions, especially GIS-based desktop applications. Mobile systems on the other hand are still neglected, even though the georeferenced objects of CityGML have many application fields, for example, in the currently popular area of location-based Augmented Reality. In this paper we present an independent multi-platform CityGML viewer, its architecture and specific implementation techniques that we use to realize and optimize the process of visualizing CityGML data for use in Augmented Reality. The main focus lies in improving the implementation on mobile devices, such as smartphones, and assessing its usability and performance in comparison to web-based approaches. Due to the constrained hardware resources of smartphones, it is a particular challenge to handle complex 3D objects and large virtual worlds as provided by CityGML, not only in terms of memory and storage space, but also with respect to mobile processing units and display sizes.     

一种基于地理信息的手机用户定位方法北大核心CSCD

基于手机信令数据的用户轨迹行为分析已广泛应用于交通监测、城市管理、人口分析等多个业务领域。针对手机基站定位与用户实际位置存在偏差且驻留轨迹缺失语义信息的问题,本文提出了一种基于地理信息的手机信令数据用户定位方法。该方法首先构建面向轨迹分析的地理实体数据采集规范;然后对手机信令数据进行聚类,建立地理实体与基站的权重映射关系;最后使用时空推理及对轨迹的深度学习技术,将用户有效驻留轨迹点拟合至实际的地理实体,实现用户定位。验证结果表明,该方法提升了用户定位的准确度,为后续业务场景的应用提供了可靠的数据支撑。     

移动轨迹聚类方法研究综述

轨迹数据是人类移动行为的表征,能够映射出人的出行模式和社会属性等信息。怎样有效挖掘轨迹数据蕴藏的人类活动规律一直是研究的热点。通过轨迹聚类发现行为相似的类簇,从而探究群体的移动模式是轨迹挖掘和深度应用常见的方法之一。本文首先根据轨迹数据的特点,将轨迹数据模型分为轨迹点模型和轨迹段模型,并据此定义相应的相似性度量：空间相似性度量和时空相似性度量;然后,对两类模型的聚类方法进行了综述,并总结不同聚类算法的优缺点,以期为不同应用选取聚类算法提供科学依据;最后对移动轨迹数据聚类方法研究的发展趋势进行了讨论。     

Discovering Chasing Behavior in Moving Object Trajectories

With the increasing use of mobile devices, a lot of tracks of movement of objects are being collected. The advanced trajectory data mining research has allowed the discovery of many types of patterns from these data, like flocks, leadership, avoidance, frequent sequences, and other types of patterns. In this article we introduce a new kind of pattern: a chasing behavior between trajectories. We present the main characteristics of chasing and propose a new method that extracts this new kind of trajectory behavior pattern, considering time, distance, and speed as the main thresholds. Experimental results show that our method finds patterns that are not discovered by related approaches.     

Trajectory Ontologies and Queries

Many real world applications today are built on analyses of movement and related features. Examples of such applications include transportation management, urban planning, tourism services, and animal migration monitoring, among others. Recent database modeling and management research prototypes have the capability to store and manipulate movement data in terms of point or region geometries that evolve over time (moving point or moving and deforming region). This captures the spatio‐temporal trace left by a moving object, but ignores its links with non‐geometric information that enable a semantic interpretation of the movement of moving objects. The concept of trajectory has been introduced to express a more semantic understanding of movement, taking it closer to the perception of applications. This article describes a framework for a semantics‐oriented structuring, modeling and querying of trajectory data. The framework relies on the definition of trajectory‐related ontologies, addressing domain‐independent and application‐specific geometric and semantic facets. Last we briefly discuss how the proposed approach has been applied for a traffic management application.     

室内用户语义位置模式挖掘研究——以商场为例

结合室内轨迹数据的特点,研究了室内移动对象语义轨迹序列处理方法,以及利用LDA主题模型与用户历史轨迹进行室内商场用户分类的方法。提出了通过关联规则分析挖掘用户语义位置模式的方法,并以北京某大型商场的实际用户轨迹数据为例,对所提出的方法进行了实验验证。     

Towards semantic‐aware multiple‐aspect trajectory similarity measuring

The large amount of semantically rich mobility data becoming available in the era of big data has led to a need for new trajectory similarity measures. In the context of multiple‐aspect trajectories, where mobility data are enriched with several semantic dimensions, current state‐of‐the‐art approaches present some limitations concerning the relationships between attributes and their semantics. Existing works are either too strict, requiring a match on all attributes, or too flexible, considering all attributes as independent. In this article we propose MUITAS, a novel similarity measure for a new type of trajectory data with heterogeneous semantic dimensions, which takes into account the semantic relationship between attributes, thus filling the gap of the current trajectory similarity methods. We evaluate MUITAS over two real datasets of multiple‐aspect social media and GPS trajectories. With precision at recall and clustering techniques, we show that MUITAS is the most robust measure for multiple‐aspect trajectories.     

CONSTAnT – A Conceptual Data Model for Semantic Trajectories of Moving Objects

Several works have been proposed in the last few years for raw trajectory data analysis, and some attempts have been made to define trajectories from a more semantic point of view. Semantic trajectory data analysis has received significant attention recently, but the formal definition of semantic trajectory, the set of aspects that should be considered to semantically enrich trajectories and a conceptual data model integrating these aspects from a broad sense is still missing. This article presents a semantic trajectory conceptual data model named CONSTAnT, which defines the most important aspects of semantic trajectories. We believe that this model will be the foundation for the design of semantic trajectory databases, where several aspects that make a trajectory “semantic” are taken into account. The proposed model includes the concepts of semantic subtrajectory, semantic points, geographical places, events, goals, environment and behavior, to create a general concept of semantic trajectory. The proposed model is the result of several years of work by the authors in an effort to add more semantics to raw trajectory data for real applications. Two application examples and different queries show the flexibility of the model for different domains.     

煤矿开采沉陷自动化监测系统设计与实现

文中以GNSS CORS技术、GIS技术、计算机网络通讯技术、移动PDA技术、现代测量数据处理技术、数据库技术、软件工程技术等为支撑,构建了煤矿开采沉陷自动监测系统。该系统软件由数据监控中心软件、矿山开采沉陷综合数据处理与分析系统软件包、实时数据采集终端系统软件等三大软件构成。该系统为矿区开采沉陷监测提供了一种高效的数据采集、数据处理和移动变形分析的自动化手段。     

Improving trajectory estimation using 3D city models and kinematic point clouds

Accurate and robust positioning of vehicles in urban environments is of high importance for autonomous driving or mobile mapping. In mobile mapping systems, a simultaneous mapping of the environment using laser scanning and an accurate positioning using global navigation satellite systems are targeted. This requirement is often not guaranteed in shadowed cities where global navigation satellite system signals are usually disturbed, weak or even unavailable. We propose a novel approach which incorporates prior knowledge (i.e., a 3D city model of the environment) and improves the trajectory. The recorded point cloud is matched with the semantic city model using a point‐to‐plane iterative closest point method. A pre‐classification step enables an informed sampling of appropriate matching points. Random forest is used as classifier to discriminate between facade and remaining points. Local inconsistencies are tackled by a segmentwise partitioning of the point cloud where an interpolation guarantees a seamless transition between the segments. The general applicability of the method implemented is demonstrated on an inner‐city data set recorded with a mobile mapping system.     

Mobile Wireless GRASS GIS for Handheld Computers Running GNU/Linux

Recent developments of the communication technologies in the last years opened a new dimension to Geographical Information Systems and Geoinformation Techno‐logies. This new dimension is mobility. It is simplifying data gathering, processing and presentation independent from the area of application. A new branch, Mobile Geoinformation Technologies, is based on wireless communication systems, mobile personal computers, positioning systems and GIS. There are some proprietary GIS software solutions for mobile or handheld devices available on the market, but they are more focused on data logging tasks than providing full powered GIS support or data processing functions. In this paper, we propose a mobile implementation of the free and easily expandable GRASS GIS software in combination with the GNU/Linux operating system run on handheld devices. This approach supports real time in the field computations, data processing and cooperation of several active mobile clients using wireless networking.     

Multidimensional Similarity Measuring for Semantic Trajectories

Most existing approaches aiming at measuring trajectory similarity are focused on two‐dimensional sequences of points, called raw trajectories. However, recent proposals have used background geographic information and social media data to enrich these trajectories with a semantic dimension, giving rise to the concept of semantic trajectories. Only a few works have proposed similarity measures for semantic trajectories or multidimensional sequences, having limitations such as predefined weight of the dimensions, sensitivity to noise, tolerance for gaps with different sizes, and the prevalence of the worst dimension similarity. In this article we propose MSM, a novel similarity measure for multidimensional sequences that overcomes the aforementioned limitations by considering and weighting the similarity in all dimensions. MSM is evaluated through an extensive experimental study that, based on a seed trajectory, creates sets of semantic trajectories with controlled transformations to introduce different kinds and levels of dissimilarity. For each set, we compute the similarity between the seed and the transformed trajectories, using different measures. The results showed that MSM was more robust and efficient than related approaches in the domain of semantic trajectories.     

CAUSTA: Clifford Algebra‐based Unified Spatio‐Temporal Analysis

Introducing Clifford algebra as the mathematical foundation, a unified spatio‐temporal data model and hierarchical spatio‐temporal index are constructed by linking basic data objects, like pointclouds and Spatio‐Temporal Hyper Cubes of different dimensions, within the multivector structure of Clifford algebra. The transformation from geographic space into homogeneous and conformal space means that geometric, metric and many other kinds of operators of Clifford algebra can be implemented and we then design the shortest path, high‐dimensional Voronoi and unified spatial‐temporal process analyses with spacetime algebra. Tests with real world data suggest these traditional GIS analysis algorithms can be extended and constructed under Clifford Algebra framework, which can accommodate multiple dimensions. The prototype software system CAUSTA (Clifford Algebra based Unified Spatial‐Temporal Analysis) provides a useful tool for investigating and modeling the distribution characteristics and dynamic process of complex geographical phenomena under the unified spatio‐temporal structure.     

MASTER: A multiple aspect view on trajectories

For many years trajectory data have been treated as sequences of space‐time points or stops and moves. However, with the explosion of the Internet of Things and the flood of big data generated on the Internet, such as weather channels and social network interactions, which can be used to enrich mobility data, trajectories become more and more complex, with multiple and heterogeneous data dimensions. The main challenge is how to integrate all this information with trajectories. In this article we introduce a new concept of trajectory, called multiple aspect trajectory, propose a robust conceptual and logical data model that supports a vast range of applications, and, differently from state‐of‐the‐art methods, we propose a storage solution for efficient multiple aspect trajectory queries. The main strength of our data model is the combination of simplicity and expressive power to represent heterogeneous aspects, ranging from simple labels to complex objects. We evaluate the proposed model in a tourism scenario and compare its query performance against the state‐of‐the‐art spatio‐temporal database SECONDO extension for symbolic trajectories.     

Mapping collective human activity in an urban environment based on mobile phone data

Identifying and characterizing variations of human activity – specifically changes in intensity and similarity – in urban environments provide insights into the social component of those eminently complex systems. Using large volumes of user-generated mobile phone data, we derive mobile communication profiles that we use as a proxy for the collective human activity. In this article, geocomputational methods and geovisual analytics such as self-organizing maps (SOM) are used to explore the variations of these profiles, and its implications for collective human activity. We evaluate the merits of SOM as a cross-dimensional clustering technique and derived temporal trajectories of variations within the mobile communication profiles. The trajectories’ characteristics such as length are discussed, suggesting spatial variations in intensity and similarity in collective human activity. Trajectories are linked back to the geographic space to map the spatial and temporal variation of trajectory characteristics. Different trajectory lengths suggest that mobile phone activity is correlated with the spatial configuration of the city, and so at different times of the day. Our approach contributes to the understanding of the space-time social dynamics within urban environments.     

移动轨迹的尺度特征

移动轨迹是移动对象在地理空间环境中移动而留下的痕迹。移动轨迹数据是一类特殊的地理时空数据，它具有时间尺度、空间尺度和语义尺度特征。本文首先分析了轨迹数据的空间尺度特征与时间尺度特征，建立了轨迹空间尺度与时间尺度转换关系式；然后论述了轨迹的语义内涵和语义尺度特征，将轨迹语义分为移动对象语义、地理空间环境语义、采集设备语义、移动方式语义，并从地理空间环境语义的角度分析了轨迹的语义多尺度；最后探讨了轨迹语义尺度与时空尺度之间的一致性关系。     

面向地理空间信息的轨迹模型及时空模式查询

轨迹数据处理与分析是目前空间信息和数据库等相关领域的研究热点之一。本文从Stop-Move轨迹模型出发,通过集成地理空间上下文信息来建模轨迹数据,并研究轨迹时空模式的查询处理技术。首先分析Stop/Move对象与点/线/面地理空间要素之间的时空关联关系,据此提出显式表达该关联语义的地理关联轨迹模型,在此基础上利用关系-对象数据库技术,为地理关联轨迹模型设计独立于应用的关系模式,接着定义轨迹时空模式查询,并提出基于地理关联轨迹关系模式的SQL处理框架,最后以典型性检索请求为例,讨论分析位置-时间、位置-顺序和位置-关系等三类轨迹时空模式查询的纯SQL处理技术,并以样例轨迹数据验证了本文方法的可行性。     

A Test Environment for Location-Based Services Applications

Location‐Based Services (LBS) are the delivery of information to mobile devices customised to location and context of the user. Some research has focused on data content, while other studies have emphasised the role of multimedia communication. However, very few objective tests have been carried out concerning usage and behaviour. In this paper, a conceptual model and a LBS test environment are presented which aim to study the behaviour and interaction between environments, individuals and mobile devices. The test environment was created, for this purpose, with three main components: urban VR models that allow individuals to ‘walk around’ at street level, a mobile device as information source which simulates LBS applications, and software for recording participant actions and reactions within the test environment. Multi‐source data were collected regarding movement tracking, information accessed through mobile device and participant observations using a combination of automated and semi‐automated methods. A case study on pedestrian wayfinding in urban settings is presented. This illustrates how the test environment can be used for LBS applications and how the data collected can be analysed. The research presented in this paper provides a novel approach in studying and understanding the interaction between environments, individuals and mobile devices.