REVEALING SPATIAL PATTERNS THROUGH SPATIAL DATA MINING AND
VISUAL EXPLORATION IN TEMPORAL DATA
A. Torun1, S. Duzgun2
1 - General Command of Mapping, Cartography Dept., Ankara,
Turkey
2 - Middle East tech Univ., GGIT Dept, Ankara, Turkey
abdulvahit.torun@hgk.mil.tr
Spatial databases reside terabytes of spatial data that may
be obtained from topographic maps, aerial photos, satellite images, medical
equipments, laser/lidar scanners, video cameras among others in public and
private organizations which also access several databases comprising census,
economic, security, and statistical information for enterprise business
processes. It is costly and often unrealistic for users to examine spatial data
in detail and search for meaningful patterns or relationships among data.
Spatial data mining (SDM) aims to automate such a knowledge discovery process
in large databases along with visual exploration techniques.
Data on its own has no value. Without exploration techniques,
it is possible to end up with massive amounts of data but no information. SDM
plays an important role in; extracting interesting spatial patterns and
features, capturing intrinsic relationships among spatial data. Being
preliminary data mining stage, exploratory techniques allow investigating first
and second order effects of the data.
Cartographic visualization allows user to interact with huge
spatial datasets to recognize spatial distributions and, relationships and
extract meaningful information by facilitating comparison, conceptualizing
spatial patterns and processes, and other cognitive skills by making use of the
visualization enabled system. Cartographic visualization is the most effective
way of communicating information about the location and spatial characteristics
of the natural world and of society. Moreover, easy to use spatial exploration
and decision making tools integrated in enterprise information systems
available for ordinary and non-spatio-experts introduced in daily life and
enterprise business workflow.
In the development stage, GIS and GI Technology shaped their
strategy due to the needs of powerful customers such as governmental,
administrative and research organizations. Individualism, change of individual
demands forces the sector to consider how people best understand spatial
phenomena, how humans actually perceive and process spatial information, and
how this varies among individuals and across cultures. This new trend opens a
new perspective and era for cartographic/geographic visualization being a
mature visual communication methodology for centuries. From a practical point
of view, visual exploration techniques are becoming a kind of common “language”
within an enterprise GIS across organizational boundaries.
In this study, firstly, spatial data mining and visual
exploration techniques are introduced. Then, an application is implemented on
historical data of oil transportation and ship accidents at Istanbul Bogazi to
discover spatial patterns among the data and its environment. Within the
context of paper, experiences in data preparation, data organization, drawbacks
of handling historical data are given.