Spatio-temporal GIS Design for Exploring Interactions of Human Activities

Abstract

An effective representation of human activities in geographic information systems (GIS) presents a challenging research topic. Recent developments of information and communication technologies (ICT), which enable a virtual space and allow people to interact with others remotely, make such efforts even more difficult. This paper first extends the space–time path concept of Hägerstrand's time geography to represent both physical and virtual activities in a space–time context. A spatio-temporal GIS design which can accommodate the extended space–time path concept is proposed to support the exploration of spatio-temporal patterns of human interactions in physical and virtual spaces. Using time as a linear referencing system, a temporal dynamic segmentation method was developed to dynamically locate physical and virtual activities on space–time paths. The GIS design supports the identification of four different spatio-temporal patterns (i.e., co-existence, co-location in space, co-location in time, and no co-location in either space or time) of human interactions through their space–time paths. Using a hypothetical activity dataset, a prototype system is implemented as a three-dimensional GIS (i.e., two-dimensional space + one-dimensional time) in ArcGIS. The prototype system demonstrates the feasibility and potential of applying spatio-temporal GIS concepts to extend Hagerstrand's time–geographic framework for the representation and analysis of human interactions in both physical and virtual spaces. The proposed GIS design can be useful in such applications as understanding traffic congestion, tracking terrorist activities, and modeling the spread of infectious diseases.