Processing and Visualizing Floating Car Data for Human-Centered Traffic and Environment Applications

Abstract

In the era of the Internet of Things and Big Data modern cars have become mobile electronic systems or computers on wheels. Car sensors record a multitude of car and traffic related data as well as environmental parameters outside the vehicle. The data recorded are spatio-temporal by nature (floating car data) and can thus be classified as geodata. Their geospatial potential is, however, not fully exploited so far. In this paper, we present an approach to collect, process and visualize floating car data for traffic- and environment-related applications. It is demonstrated that cartographic visualization, in particular, is as effective means to make the enormous stocks of machine-recorded data available to human perception, exploration and analysis.