Entry Name: KU-Kim-MC1

VAST Challenge 2017
Mini-Challenge 1

Team Members:

Wooil Kim, Korea University, wooilkim@korea.ac.kr (PRIMARY)

Changbeom Shim, Korea University, scbeom@korea.ac.kr

Ilhyun Suh, Korea University, ilhyunsuh@korea.ac.kr

Yon Dohn Chung, Korea University, ydchung@korea.ac.kr

Student Team: YES

Tools Used:

A web-based interactive visualization tool using D3.js and phython (scipy, numpy)

(developed by the VAST challenge team of Korea University)

Approximately how many hours were spent working on this submission in total?

300 hours

May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2017 is complete? YES

Video

Download (for high quality, please download this file not streaming play)

Questions

1 – “Patterns of Life” analyses depend on recognizing repeating patterns of activities by individuals or groups. Describe up to six daily patterns of life by vehicles traveling through and within the preserve. Characterize the patterns by describing the kinds of vehicles participating, their spatial activities (where do they go?), their temporal activities (when does the pattern happen?), and provide a hypothesis of what the pattern represents (for example, if I drove to a coffee house every morning, but did not stay for long, you might hypothesize I’m getting coffee “to-go”). Please limit your answer to six images and 500 words.

1-1. Figure 1 shows the pattern of rangers patrolling around the preserve. Two examples of patrol route of rangers are shown as ① in Figure 2. A notable characteristic of this pattern is that the rangers’ trucks depart from the ranger-base and finally return to their base where they have departed. This pattern occurs on regular and daily basis (see ②) and the occurrence is concentrated from 7AM to 11PM (see ③).

Figure 1. Ranger’s patrol

1-2. A set of patterns we have recognized is the pattern of vehicles that just use the preserve as a thoroughfare. The times of entrance of the vehicles are just arbitrary during daytime and nighttime. They tend to reside in the preserve about or less than an hour. This is one of the most appearing patterns derived from our analyzed results. We describe five representative routes that the vehicles have used just for passing through and provide them as daily patterns we have found.

Figure 2 describes vehicles passing through the preserve using entrance0 and entrance1 (see ①). This route takes at most 40 minutes to pass.

Figure 2. Thoroughfare (entrance0-entrance1)

1-3. Figure 3 shows vehicles passing through the preserve using entrance0 and entrance2 (see ①). It takes about 25-35 minutes to pass this route.

Figure 3. Thoroughfare (entrance0-entrance2)

1-4. Vehicles that have passed through the preserve using entrance2 and entrance4 is shown in Figure 4 (see ①). It takes approximately 20 minutes to pass this route.

Figure 4. Thoroughfare (entrance2-entrance4)

1-5. In Figure 5, we can see vehicles passing through the preserve using entrance3 and entrance2 (see ①). It takes about an hour to pass through the preserve. This route is a detour, however almost every vehicle uses this road to go through entrance3 and entrance2. The path connecting gate6 and general-gate6 can be a shortcut for these vehicles however none of the vehicles used that path (see ②). Hence, we conclude that path connecting gate6 and general-gate6 is only used for authorized vehicles.

Figure 5. Thoroughfare (entrance3-entrance2)

1-6. Figure 6 also shows vehicles’ detouring behavior to pass through entrance3 and entrance4 (see ①). The same reason explained for 1-3 (i.e. an existence of a path that is not opened to the public) can be applied that why these vehicles are selecting inefficient route (see ②).

Figure 6. Thoroughfare (entrance3-entrance4)

2 – Patterns of Life analyses may also depend on understanding what patterns appear over longer periods of time (in this case, over multiple days). Describe up to six patterns of life that occur over multiple days (including across the entire data set) by vehicles traveling through and within the preserve. Characterize the patterns by describing the kinds of vehicles participating, their spatial activities (where do they go?), their temporal activities (when does the pattern happen?), and provide a hypothesis of what the pattern represents (for example, many vehicles showing up at the same location each Saturday at the same time may suggest some activity occurring there each Saturday). Please limit your answer to six images and 500 words.

2-1. Figure 7 shows a pattern that appeared only at Tuesday and Thursday (see ②). This pattern shows 4 axle-trucks are making a round-trip to ranger-stop3 from entrance3 (see ①). In addition, this route includes the path that is not opened to the public, so we consider the trucks are authorized. We suspect that there was need for transporting supplements or materials due to a construction or a repair work of facilities near ranger-stop3. We suspect so since this traffic appears from 2AM to 6AM (see ③), which means there was a need to transport something large and heavy. Generally, we prefer transporting such things when the road is not busy.

Figure 7. The “freight” truck

2-2. This pattern shows the trajectories of overnight campers (see ①). Campers settle at the campsite and stay there for couple of days. Through our analysis, we found out that more people camped out in the weekends (see ②), as one would have expected.

Figure 8. Happy camping weekend

2-3. Figure 9 shows the vehicles that stayed at camping5 (see ①). We can easily see that there were no vehicles passing or staying in camping5 from October to April of the next year. Similarly, this tendency is also shown in all the other campsites, thus we concluded that there was an official shutdown of campsites for some reasons.

Figure 9. Camping season

2-4. From Figure 10, we see that there are not many people visit camping1 compared to those who visit camping5. Our hypothesis is that there is a specific matter that makes people avoid staying at camping1. The reason might be the related with the pattern we found and declared in Figure 7 since camping1 is very close to ranger-stop3. Something was happening near ranger-stop3 (e.g. late-night freight traffics, noise) which prevented people from staying at camping1.

Figure 10. The popular camping sites

2-5. Figure 11 shows the vehicles passing through the preserve, which is one of the most commonly repeating daily patterns (as describe in answers for Question 1). Interestingly, this pattern rarely occurs in the winter period in January and February (see ①). We suspect there was a traffic restriction due to severe weather conditions like frozen roads.

Figure 11. Traffic restriction in winter

2-6. Related with the avoidance of camping1 shown in Figure 10, there are a number of people who have first visited camping1, but soon changed their mind and left to other campsites. The portion of these mind changers is very large so we suggest this as a reason for our hypothesis: a critical issue exists near camping1 or ranger-stop3 (which is very close to camping1) that makes people avoid camping1.

Figure 12. Unprefered camping site

3 – Unusual patterns may be patterns of activity that changes from an established pattern, or are just difficult to explain from what you know of a situation. Describe up to six unusual patterns (either single day or multiple days) and highlight why you find them unusual. Please limit your answer to six images and 500 words.

3-1. A very unique pattern we have discovered is a group of six vehicles that have reached ranger-stop1 in July 10th (see Figure 13). They arrived at the ranger stop simultaneously, however they left separately, after spending from one to six hours. Another factor that makes this route very unique is that they did not pass through the gate2, which should have been passed to reach ranger-stop1. A supposition we have derived is that this was a kind of a visit for personal purpose by people who have friendship with the staff at the preserve. Furthermore, we guess they could have had lunch together because the arrival time is about lunch time.

Figure 13. The rangers’ acquaintances

3-2. In Figure 14, we noticed that there was a person who had visited camping5 at January and stayed for a couple of days (see ①). He was the only visitor from November to April (6 months).

Figure 14. Winter camping

3-3. Figure 15 shows two cases of a pattern that have entered through the entrance but soon left the preserve (see ①). The more interesting fact is that these vehicles came back after 10~12 hours (see ②). From these facts, we presume that this particular person with a 4 axle-truck had a reason to leave as soon as he entered the preserve. He might have missed something that he should have brought with and so he had to go back home.

Figure 15. Come back home

3-4. As opposed to the case of Figure 15, a particular person shown in Figure 16 might have left something behind after his overnight camping (see ①). We can see the route of a vehicle that came back to the campsite where he stayed last night after he left the preserve. Interestingly, this action happened two times (see ②).

Figure 16. Search for lost in camping site

3-5. There was a person who was wandering around for more than five months without leaving the preserve. This person visited every campsite in the preserve except for camping4 and camping6. Our guesses for the identity of this person are twofold: he might be a fugitive from the police authority or he just loves camping too much. (see ①, ②, ③)

Figure 17. Stranger

4 –– What are the top 3 patterns you discovered that you suspect could be most impactful to bird life in the nature preserve? (Short text answer)

(1) The pattern of thoroughfares in Question 1

(2) The pattern of 4 axle-trucks’ freight to ranger-stop3 in Question 2

(3) The pattern is the stranger in Question 3