A Framework for Spatial-Temporal Trajectory Cluster Analysis Based on Dynamic Relationships

In spatial-temporal data analysis, location data and its evolution through time are investigated with the goal of uncovering important information to provide novel insights. These insights, for example, may involve congestion identification in transportation, mobility patterns in urban computing, and storm prediction in weather forecasting. Clustering, one data analysis technique, groups spatial-temporal data based on location. Current spatial-temporal data analysis techniques fail to investigate relationships between spatial-temporal clusters, such as splitting from a cluster and merging with another one because of a change of properties over time. These relationships could hold valuable information about the existence of a cluster and its interactions with other clusters and trajectories. In this paper, we introduce a framework to identify, process, and analyze relationships between clusters of spatial-temporal data (e.g. enter, merge, or split). We describe its architecture and components, as well as a proposed clustering technique, the different approaches for distance calculation, and how we calculate cluster similarity of temporally separated clusters. The result of these operations are used in the identification of cluster relationships over space and time. The analysis of these relationships helps uncover hidden values that could support novel approaches to more effective decision-making. We evaluate our framework with two case studies, based on truck and human trajectories.