A Multiscale Approach for Spatio-Temporal Outlier Detection

A spatial outlier is a spatially referenced object whose thematic attribute values are significantly different from those of other spatially referenced objects in its spatial neighborhood. It represents an object that is significantly different from its neighbourhoods even though it may not be significantly different from the entire population. Here we extend this concept to the spatio‐temporal domain and define a spatial‐temporal outlier (ST‐outlier) to be a spatial‐temporal object whose thematic attribute values are significantly different from those of other spatially and temporally referenced objects in its spatial or/and temporal neighbourhoods. Identification of ST‐outliers can lead to the discovery of unexpected, interesting, and implicit knowledge, such as local instability or deformation. Many methods have been recently proposed to detect spatial outliers, but how to detect the temporal outliers or spatial‐temporal outliers has been seldom discussed. In this paper we propose a multiscale approach to detect ST‐outliers by evaluating the change between consecutive spatial and temporal scales. A four‐step procedure consisting of classification, aggregation, comparison and verification is put forward to address the semantic and dynamic properties of geographic phenomena for ST‐outlier detection. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by a practical coastal geomorphic study.     

Geospatial Ontology Development and Semantic Analytics

Geospatial ontology development and semantic knowledge discovery addresses the need for modeling, analyzing and visualizing multimodal information, and is unique in offering integrated analytics that encompasses spatial, temporal and thematic dimensions of information and knowledge. The comprehensive ability to provide integrated analysis from multiple forms of information and use of explicit knowledge make this approach unique. This also involves specification of spatiotemporal thematic ontologies and populating such ontologies with high quality knowledge. Such ontologies form the basis for defining the meaning of important relations terms, such as near or surrounded by, and enable computation of spatiotemporal thematic proximity measures we define. SWETO (Semantic Web Technology Evaluation Ontology) and geospatial extension SWETO‐GS are examples of these ontologies. The Geospatial Semantics Analytics (GSA) framework incorporates: (1) the ability to automatically and semi‐automatically tract metadata from syntactically (including unstructured, semi‐structured and structured data) and semantically heterogeneous and multimodal data from diverse sources; and (2) analytical processing that exploits these ontologies and associated knowledge bases, with integral support for what we term spatiotemporal thematic proximity (STTP) reasoning and interactive visualization capabilities. This paper discusses the results of our geospatial ontology development efforts as well as some new semantic analytics methods on this ontology such as STTP.     

The Basic Formal Ontology as a Reference Framework for Modeling the Evolution of Administrative Units

In information systems, ontologies promise advantages such as enhanced interoperability, knowledge sharing, and integration of data sources. In this article, we show that the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology can facilitate the modeling of an evolution of administrative units. This is demonstrated by creating a spatiotemporal ontology for the administrative units of Switzerland. The ontology tackles the problem that the geometric data is typically captured by taking snapshots at regular intervals while the thematic data is continually updated. The ontology presented merges time‐stamped geometries with a formally described history of administrative units, allowing for complex spatiotemporal queries neither standard approach would support. The resulting populated knowledge base was evaluated against a set of spatiotemporal test queries. The evaluation showed that this knowledge base supports a wide range of queries on the evolution of the administrative units of Switzerland between 1960 and 2010.     

Measures of spatio-temporal accuracy for time series land cover data

Remote sensing is a useful tool for monitoring changes in land cover over time. The accuracy of such time-series analyses has hitherto only been assessed using confusion matrices. The matrix allows global measures of user, producer and overall accuracies to be generated, but lacks consideration of any spatial aspects of accuracy. It is well known that land cover errors are typically spatially auto-correlated and can have a distinct spatial distribution. As yet little work has considered the temporal dimension and investigated the persistence or errors in both geographic and temporal dimensions. Spatio-temporal errors can have a profound impact on both change detection and on environmental monitoring and modelling activities using land cover data. This study investigated methods for describing the spatio-temporal characteristics of classification accuracy. Annual thematic maps were created using a random forest classification of MODIS data over the Jakarta metropolitan areas for the period of 2001–2013. A logistic geographically weighted model was used to estimate annual spatial measures of user, producer and overall accuracies. A principal component analysis was then used to extract summaries of the multi-temporal accuracy. The results showed how the spatial distribution of user and producer accuracy varied over space and time, and overall spatial variance was confirmed by the principal component analysis. The results indicated that areas of homogeneous land cover were mapped with relatively high accuracy and low variability, and areas of mixed land cover with the opposite characteristics. A multi-temporal spatial approach to accuracy is shown to provide more informative measures of accuracy, allowing map producers and users to evaluate time series thematic maps more comprehensively than a standard confusion matrix approach. The need to identify suitable properties for a temporal kernel are discussed.     

矢栅一体化拓扑关系的度量描述研究

首先,借助传统的9交模型确定了矢栅一体化数据模型拓扑关系的定性表达;其次,利用重叠部分的栅格数目占各个目标的比率来确定交叠分量,同时根据栅格的统计量来描述两目标接近程度的邻近分量;最终,将定性的拓扑关系、用以度量化描述的交叠分量及邻近分量以三元组的形式来描述目标间的拓扑关系,从而更加有效地实现了多类型地理目标拓扑关系的度量化描述。     

Ontology‐based Qualitative Feature Analysis: Bays as a Case Study

A methodology for analyzing geographic data using the techniques of: (1) qualitative geometric abstraction; and (2) ontological analysis of geographic features is described. The first technique is a bottom‐up approach to extract qualitative spatial relations from geographic representations (raster or vector) while the second technique is a top‐down approach to determine which qualitative relations can possibly hold between the parts of the geographic features. The process of analyzing geographic data includes the extraction of both the features and the qualitative relations among features. These qualitative relations are then used to classify the geographic features within the “space” of ontological possibilities. In this article bays in Wisconsin and their cartographic representation are used as a running example and the subject of a case study.     

Improving Geocode Accuracy with Candidate Selection Criteria

Geocoding systems typically use more than one geographic reference dataset to improve match rates and spatial accuracy, resulting in multiple candidate geocodes from which the single “best” result must be selected. Little scientific evidence exists for formalizing this selection process or comparing one strategy to another, leading to the approach used in existing systems which we term the hierarchy‐based criterion: place the available reference data layers into qualitative, static, and in many cases, arbitrary hierarchies and attempt a match in each layer, in order. The first non‐ambiguous match with suitable confidence is selected and returned as output. This approach assumes global relationships of relative accuracy between reference data layers, ignoring local variations that could be exploited to return more precise geocodes. We propose a formalization of the selection criteria and present three alternative strategies which we term the uncertainty‐, gravitationally‐, and topologically‐based strategies. The performance of each method is evaluated against two ground truth datasets of nationwide GPS points to determine any resulting spatial improvements. We find that any of the three new methods improves on current practice in the majority of cases. The gravitationally‐ and topologically‐based approaches offer improvement over a simple uncertainty‐based approach in cases with specific characteristics.     

KGI-XGIS SUPPORTING DECISION MAKING WITH KNOWLEDGE-BASED TECHNIQUES

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Multi‐Scale Qualitative Location: A Topology‐Based Model

Qualitative locations describe spatial objects by relating the spatial objects to a frame of reference (e.g. a regional partition in this study) with qualitative relations. Existing models only formalize spatial objects, frames of reference, and their relations at one scale, thus limiting their applicability in representing location changes of spatial objects across scales. A topology‐based, multi‐scale qualitative location model is proposed to represent the associations of multiple representations of the same objects with respect to the frames of reference at different levels. Multi‐scale regional partitions are first presented to be the frames of reference at multiple levels of scale. Multi‐scale locations are then formalized to relate multiple representations of the same objects to the multiple frames of reference by topological relations. Since spatial objects, frames of reference, and topological relations in qualitative locations are scale dependent, scale transformation approaches are presented to derive possible coarse locations from detailed locations by incorporating polygon merging, polygon‐to‐line and polygon‐to‐point operators.     

关于线状地理特征空间关系的自然语言描述的形式化表达

目前的地理信息系统都使用定量的方法存储和查询空间信息,不能反映人们的定性思维方式,因此它表达地理空间信息的能力受到限制。在关于空间关系的自然语言描述的调查的基础上,本文定义了一组能反映线状物体空间关系的度量指标,结合反映拓扑关系的定量指标,使用决策树的数据挖掘算法,对调查结果进行分析,形式化了描述空间关系的自然语言词汇,建立了模糊的自然语言表达和图形的几何特征之间的联系。自然语言形式化后得到的规则可用于空间关系的自然语言查询系统。     

ADCN: An anisotropic density‐based clustering algorithm for discovering spatial point patterns with noise

Density‐based clustering algorithms such as DBSCAN have been widely used for spatial knowledge discovery as they offer several key advantages compared with other clustering algorithms. They can discover clusters with arbitrary shapes, are robust to noise, and do not require prior knowledge (or estimation) of the number of clusters. The idea of using a scan circle centered at each point with a search radius Eps to find at least MinPts points as a criterion for deriving local density is easily understandable and sufficient for exploring isotropic spatial point patterns. However, there are many cases that cannot be adequately captured this way, particularly if they involve linear features or shapes with a continuously changing density, such as a spiral. In such cases, DBSCAN tends to either create an increasing number of small clusters or add noise points into large clusters. Therefore, in this article, we propose a novel anisotropic density‐based clustering algorithm (ADCN). To motivate our work, we introduce synthetic and real‐world cases that cannot be handled sufficiently by DBSCAN (or OPTICS). We then present our clustering algorithm and test it with a wide range of cases. We demonstrate that our algorithm can perform equally as well as DBSCAN in cases that do not benefit explicitly from an anisotropic perspective, and that it outperforms DBSCAN in cases that do. Finally, we show that our approach has the same time complexity as DBSCAN and OPTICS, namely O(n log n) when using a spatial index and O(n²) otherwise. We provide an implementation and test the runtime over multiple cases.     

从GIS数据库中挖掘空间关联规则研究

G IS数据库中空间关联规则发现是SDMKD的重要内容,广泛涉及到知识的表示和推理,需要地理空间知识的深入参与。在地理空间认知的基础上,结合认知逻辑,通过ILP对空间关联规则进行形式化描述,特别分析了其中涉及的空间谓词;通过例子说明了形式化空间关联规则的具体应用。从G IS数据库中挖掘空间关联规则的主要问题是多层、多关系的规则挖掘问题,不同专题图层不同空间对象之间空间谓词的高效计算与存储表达是解决问题的关键;把空间关系非空间化,将连续数据离散化,从而把求解问题转换成布尔型关联规则问题进行讨论,基于此而探讨了一种通过SJI-P表组织空间谓词,然后根据目标对象的概念层级自顶向下、逐层细化的空间关联规则挖掘方法。     

Home range and habitat: Using platial characteristics to define urban areas from the bottom up

The spatial representation of a city is typically formed by top‐down jurisdictional boundaries. A parallel approach would be to consider representing a city based on platial characteristics, that is, a bottom‐up landscape created through individual and collectively derived representations. This study contributes to this discourse through the exploratory examination of the ecology notions of home range and habitat applied to humans in an urban context. Using spatial data collected through a WebGIS platform, we employ a spatial definition of sense of place and social capital to understand the platial nature of the city and, simultaneously, defining home range and habitat as platial notions. We found spatial variability among individual home range and habitat and the difficulty of traditional administrative boundaries to represent these areas. This research defines and presents home range and habitat to partially describe the emergent nature of platial theory and explores their operationalization at the urban level.     

Object‐oriented tracking of thematic and spatial behaviors of urban heat islands

Modeling thematic and spatial dynamic behaviors of urban heat islands (UHIs) over time is important for understanding the evolution of this phenomenon to mitigate the warming effect in urban areas. Although previous studies conceptualized that a UHI only has a single life cycle with spatial behaviors, a UHI can be detected to appear and disappear several times periodically in terms of thematic and spatial integrated behaviors. Such multiple behaviors have not yet been illustrated with proof or evidence. This study conceptualizes a UHI as an object which has thematic and spatial behaviors simultaneously and proposes several graphs to depict periodic life‐cycle transitions triggered by behaviors. The conceptualized behaviors have been modeled and implemented in an object‐relational database management system and temperature readings collected from numerous weather stations were interpolated as temperature images per hour. The results of this study indicate that the model could track the spatial and thematic evolution of UHIs continuously and reveal their periodical patterns and abnormal cases.     

Extracting urban functional regions from points of interest and human activities on location‐based social networks

Data about points of interest (POI) have been widely used in studying urban land use types and for sensing human behavior. However, it is difficult to quantify the correct mix or the spatial relations among different POI types indicative of specific urban functions. In this research, we develop a statistical framework to help discover semantically meaningful topics and functional regions based on the co‐occurrence patterns of POI types. The framework applies the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling technique and incorporates user check‐in activities on location‐based social networks. Using a large corpus of about 100,000 Foursquare venues and user check‐in behavior in the 10 most populated urban areas of the US, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed methodology by identifying distinctive types of latent topics and, further, by extracting urban functional regions using K‐means clustering and Delaunay triangulation spatial constraints clustering. We show that a region can support multiple functions but with different probabilities, while the same type of functional region can span multiple geographically non‐adjacent locations. Since each region can be modeled as a vector consisting of multinomial topic distributions, similar regions with regard to their thematic topic signatures can be identified. Compared with remote sensing images which mainly uncover the physical landscape of urban environments, our popularity‐based POI topic modeling approach can be seen as a complementary social sensing view on urban space based on human activities.     

基于空间推理的专题影像解译

遥感影像的计算机解译已广泛地应用于许多领域，但要达到完全自动地解译的目标仍然存在不少问题。本文研究的问题是，在统计分类的基础上，引入空间推理方法，对遥感影像进行专题解译，直至最后自动地输出专题图。据此，文中提出了按专题影像分析需要所形成的由原始影像、分割影像、等质区影像、分类解译影像和功能区影像等构成的表达法层次。在低层次影像分析中，影像按照统计属性被分割；在中间层次和高层次的影像分析中，与地物和专题有关的结构和空间知识被利用。本文说明了四叉树生成、复合形标记、复合形归并和匹配等在沟通不同的表达法中的作用。设计了应用于专题影像解译的差别图。介绍了与差别图和空间分析有关的规则。最后，上述技术已被有效地应用于中国吉林省双阳县的植被调查。     

多粒度的GIS数据不确定性粗集表达

粗集是一种处理地理信息不确定性和不精确性的新型数学工具,在揭示和表达多层次(或粒度)的空间知识方面具有较大优势。为此,从空间信息观测或表达的粒度角度来探讨空间数据所蕴含的不确定性。在此基础上,运用粗集理论中的一些基本概念和方法来系统地描述和表达空间目标位置数据、属性数据以及空间关系数据的不确定性,旨在建立一种多粒度的不确定性分析和表达方法。     

Similarity Measurements on Multi‐Scale Qualitative Locations

Qualitative representation of spatial locations and their similarity measurements are essential for the analysis of linguistic term‐based data. Existing methods have focused on the similarities of spatial relations and spatial scenes but have not considered the variations in geometrical representations and relations over scales. This study developed some new measures to assess the similarities of both single‐ and multi‐scale qualitative locations. Region‐ and cell‐based models were used to formalize qualitative locations of spatial objects with respect to multi‐scale frames of reference. The similarities were assessed by integrating the similarities of frames and qualitative relations. The frame similarity measures how two objects are compared considering the common elements that they occupy in the reference frames. Moreover, the similarity of qualitative relation measures how two relations relate two objects to the corresponding elements in the frames. The location similarities at a single level integrate the similarities of the frames and qualitative relations, whereas the location similarities at multiple scales incorporate the variations in qualitative locations over scales. These methods were used to assess location similarities concerning residential areas, roads, and lakes. The results indicated that the location‐based measurements can disclose the distributions of the similarities and that the cell‐based model is more accurate than the region‐based model.