时空大数据背景下并行数据处理分析挖掘的进展及趋势

随着互联网、物联网和云计算的高速发展,与时间、空间相关的数据呈现出“爆炸式”增长的趋势,时空大数据时代已经来临。时空大数据除具备大数据典型的“4V”特性外,还具备丰富的语义特征和时空动态关联特性,已经成为地理学者分析自然地理环境、感知人类社会活动规律的重要资源。然而在具体研究应用中,传统数据处理和分析方法已无法满足时空大数据高效存取、实时处理、智能挖掘的性能需求。因此,时空大数据与高性能计算/云计算融合是必然的发展趋势。在此背景下,本文首先从大数据的起源出发,回顾了大数据概念的发展历程,以及时空大数据的特有特征;然后分析了时空大数据研究应用产生的性能需求,总结了底层平台软硬件的发展现状;进而重点从时空大数据的存储管理、时空分析和领域挖掘3个角度对并行化现状进行了总结,阐述了其中存在的问题;最后指出了时空大数据研究发展趋势。     

An automated approach to the classification of the slope units using digital data

Digital elevation and remote sensing data sets contain different, yet complementary, information related to geomorphological features. Digital elevation models (DEMs) represent the topography, or land form, whereas remote sensing data record the reflectance/emittance, or spectral, characteristics of surfaces. Computer analysis of integrated digital data sets can be exploited for geomorphological classification using automated methods developed in the remote sensing community. In the present study, geomorphological classification in a moderate- to high-relief area dominated by slope processes in southwest Yukon Territory, Canada, is performed with a combined set of geomorphometric and spectral variables in a linear discriminant analysis. An automated method was developed to find the boundaries of geomorphological objects and to extract the objects as groups of aggregated pixels. The geomorphological objects selected are slope units, with the boundaries being breaks of slope on two-dimensional downslope profiles. Each slope unit is described by variables summarizing the shape, topographic, and spectral characteristics of the aggregated group of pixels. Overall discrimination accuracy of 90% is achieved for the aggregated slope units in ten classes.     

Leveraging parallel spatio-temporal computing for crime analysis in large datasets: analyzing trends in near-repeat phenomenon of crime in cities

ABSTRACT

Crime often clusters in space and time. Near-repeat patterns improve understanding of crime communicability and their space–time interactions. Near-repeat analysis requires extensive computing resources for the assessment of statistical significance of space–time interactions. A computationally intensive Monte Carlo simulation-based approach is used to evaluate the statistical significance of the space-time patterns underlying near-repeat events. Currently available software for identifying near-repeat patterns is not scalable for large crime datasets. In this paper, we show how parallel spatial programming can help to leverage spatio-temporal simulation-based analysis in large datasets. A parallel near-repeat calculator was developed and a set of experiments were conducted to compare the newly developed software with an existing implementation, assess the performance gain due to parallel computation, test the scalability of the software to handle large crime datasets and assess the utility of the new software for real-world crime data analysis. Our experimental results suggest that, efficiently designed parallel algorithms that leverage high-performance computing along with performance optimization techniques could be used to develop software that are scalable with large datasets and could provide solutions for computationally intensive statistical simulation-based approaches in crime analysis.     

Massively parallel spatial point pattern analysis: Ripley’s K function accelerated using graphics processing units

This study presents a massively parallel spatial computing approach that uses general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs) to accelerate Ripley’s K function for univariate spatial point pattern analysis. Ripley’s K function is a representative spatial point pattern analysis approach that allows for quantitatively evaluating the spatial dispersion characteristics of point patterns. However, considerable computation is often required when analyzing large spatial data using Ripley’s K function. In this study, we developed a massively parallel approach of Ripley’s K function for accelerating spatial point pattern analysis. GPUs serve as a massively parallel platform that is built on many-core architecture for speeding up Ripley’s K function. Variable-grained domain decomposition and thread-level synchronization based on shared memory are parallel strategies designed to exploit concurrency in the spatial algorithm of Ripley’s K function for efficient parallelization. Experimental results demonstrate that substantial acceleration is obtained for Ripley’s K function parallelized within GPU environments.     

A strategy for raster-based geocomputation under different parallel computing platforms

The demand for parallel geocomputation based on raster data is constantly increasing with the increase of the volume of raster data for applications and the complexity of geocomputation processing. The difficulty of parallel programming and the poor portability of parallel programs between different parallel computing platforms greatly limit the development and application of parallel raster-based geocomputation algorithms. A strategy that hides the parallel details from the developer of raster-based geocomputation algorithms provides a promising way towards solving this problem. However, existing parallel raster-based libraries cannot solve the problem of the poor portability of parallel programs. This paper presents such a strategy to overcome the poor portability, along with a set of parallel raster-based geocomputation operators (PaRGO) designed and implemented under this strategy. The developed operators are compatible with three popular types of parallel computing platforms: graphics processing unit supported by compute unified device architecture, Beowulf cluster supported by message passing interface (MPI), and symmetrical multiprocessing cluster supported by MPI and open multiprocessing, which make the details of the parallel programming and the parallel hardware architecture transparent to users. By using PaRGO in a style similar to sequential program coding, geocomputation developers can quickly develop parallel raster-based geocomputation algorithms compatible with three popular parallel computing platforms. Practical applications in implementing two algorithms for digital terrain analysis show the effectiveness of PaRGO.