An Evaluation of Space Time Cube Representation of Spatiotemporal Patterns

Abstract

Abstract-Space time cube representation is an information visualization technique where spatiotemporal data points are mapped into a cube. Information visualization researchers have previously argued that space time cube representation is beneficial in revealing complex spatiotemporal patterns in a data set to users. The argument is based on the fact that both time and spatial information are displayed simultaneously to users, an effect difficult to achieve in other representations. However, to our knowledge the actual usefulness of space time cube representation in conveying complex spatiotemporal patterns to users has not been empirically validated. To fill this gap, we report on a between-subjects experiment comparing novice users' error rates and response times when answering a set of questions using either space time cube or a baseline 2D representation. For some simple questions, the error rates were lower when using the baseline representation. For complex questions where the participants needed an overall understanding of the spatiotemporal structure of the data set, the space time cube representation resulted in on average twice as fast response times with no difference in error rates compared to the baseline. These results provide an empirical foundation for the hypothesis that space time cube representation benefits users analyzing complex spatiotemporal patterns.

Exploration of spatio-temporal patterns of students’ movement in field trip by visualizing the log data

“…The Kernel density estimation has a weakness to represent the temporal data while it has an advantage to show the data density and clustering of various points. On the other hand 3D geo-visualization has a big advantage to visualize the spatial pat-tern, the spatial relationship, and the change by time to make one understand intuitively the complex spatio-temporal patterns (Rinner 2004;Kristensson et al 2009). Up to now there are two 3D geovisualization methods such as space-time scan statistics and space time cube in the world.…”

“…The cylinders represent the space (position) and time (height) in a map. On the other hand, one can use the space time cube method, which express the spatio-temporal data in a cube map (Kristensson et al 2009), to identify the spatio-temporal patterns through both the space time density analysis and the hot spot analysis (Rinner 2004;Kristensson et al 2009). Softwares for space time cube analysis are ESRI's ArcPro, geo-time software, and pyprocessing (Rinner 2004).…”

Visualization of Vessel Traffic

“…Patterns of pedestrian movements are evaluated by Kristensson et al [93] in a spacetime cube and a map with polylines annotated with labels containing timestamps. Subjects solve spatio-temporal queries with various levels of complexity for upto four trajectories.…”

Space-Time Analysis of Crime Patterns in Central London

“…Animations and scatter plots in spacetime cubes (Kristensson, et al 2009) are suitable for representing point clouds in time and space. Scatter plot in space-time cubes are suitable for small point clouds, <2000 points, as over plotting degrades the display (Klemelä 2009).…”