Entry Name: "HKUST-Qiao-MC1"
VAST Challenge 2017
Mini-Challenge 1
Team
Members:
Qiao GU, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, qgu@connect.ust.hk PRIMARY
Hang YIN, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, hyinac@connect.ust.hk
Lian CHEN, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, lchenbk@connect.ust.hk
Chengzhong LIU, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, cliubf@connect.ust.hk
Haotian LI, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, hlibg@connect.ust.hk
Xuanwu YUE, The Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, xuanwu.yue@gmail.com
Huamin QU, The Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, huamin@cse.ust.hk
Student Team: YES
Tools
Used:
Python scripts with matplotlib
library, written by the student team for the challenge.
PreserVis, a HTML+CSS+JS system
with Vue.js, d3.js, ECharts library, developed by the student team for the
challenge.
Approximately how many hours were spent working on
this submission in total?
20 days * 5 hours/day = 100 hours
May we post your submission in the Visual Analytics
Benchmark Repository after VAST Challenge 2017 is complete? YES
Video
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 park.
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.
Pattern 1: Passing through the preserve
Figure: Pattern Overview (Passing By)
Route: Vehicles entered from one entrance and directly headed to another one, and they did not leave records at any of the camping areas or gates. This pattern contained the routes starting from each of the entrances and ending at another one.
Speed/Stop: Vehicles ran at the relatively high speed, and almost took no stay at any of the points in the preserve,
Occurrence distribution: This pattern happened less frequently in winter. And the entries distribution averagely among all time of one day.
Vehicles type: All type except the 2 axles truck with access.
Hypothesis: This pattern happened most frequently among all patterns and basically represented the vehicles that just passed through the preserve. However, because it happened more in the seasons that plants were abundant, some of the vehicles might contain the intention of sightseeing in the preserve.
Pattern 2: Ranger inspection in the preserve
Figure: Pattern Overview (Ranger)
Route: Vehicles started or ended at the ranger-base, passed through some of the gates and ranger-stops. Only a few routes are constantly visited, and most routes are only visited once in the year.
Speed/Stop: Vehicles spent long time at the ranger-stops, which might mean the rangers were doing their work at the ranger-stops.
Occurrence distribution: Occurrences were distributed averagely on the dates, and most of them started in the daytime.
Vehicles type: Only 2 axles truck with access
Hypothesis: These Vehicles should belong to the rangers and reflects their works.
Pattern 3: Day-trips and Camping
Figure: Pattern Overview (Camping)
Figure: Staying Time Distribution for Camping Pattern
Route: Vehicles started from one of the entrances, visited one of
the camping areas and then left the preserve by one of the entrances.
Speed/Stop: The staying time of vehicles in the camping area varied a lot. Some only stayed at camping areas for a short time (even only stayed for a few seconds and left, an example of which is shown in the Travel Detail in the figure). Others stayed for a quite long time (almost for one month). Besides, the staying time distribution is very like an inverse proportional function and the vehicles tended more to leave when their staying time is multiple times of 24 hours.
Occurrence distribution: This pattern mainly happened from May to October with highest frequency lying in July. Especially, in the peak season, there were more than 300 vehicles staying in the preserve for camping at the same time. This pattern happened more frequently in weekend.
Vehicles Type: Only 2 axle cars (or motorcycle), 2 axle trucks and 3 axle trucks
Hypothesis: Due to the variation of the staying time of different travels in this pattern, we think this pattern represent entries for both the day-trips (last for no more one day) and overnight camping (last for more than one day). However, because there is no obvious clue to further divide this pattern, vehicles for Nature and conservation study, birding may also be in this pattern.
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 park. 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.
Pattern 1: Transportation for Ranger Stop
Figure: Pattern Overview (Transportation for Ranger Stop)
Route: vehicles entered the preserve from entrance 3, pass ranger-stop 3 and 6, then left the preserve from the entrance 3.
Speed/Stop: All occurrences lasted for less than one hour, and the speed showed that it did not have obviously stop in the preserve.
Occurrence Distribution: This pattern happened throughout the year with relatively low frequency. But the day-time punchcard shows that this pattern only happened before dawn at Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Vehicles Type: Only 4 (or more) axles trucks.
Hypothesis: Considering these trucks could pass the gate, they should have the same access right as the rangers’ vehicles which enabled them to pass all gate. Some freight transportation might happen in the on Tuesdays and Thursdays in that year.
Pattern 2: Special activity of the 4 axle trucks
Figure: Pattern Overview (Special activity of the 4 axle trucks)
Route: This pattern happened 6 times. Their behaviors were strange: they first left two records at one entrance in a short time, then seemed to leave the preserve or stay at the entrance point for about 10 hours. And then go back to the preserve at the same entrance and behaved like the normal Passing By pattern afterwards.
Speed/Stop: All occurrences last for approximately 10 hours, but for most the staying time they seemed to leave the preserve.
Occurrence Distribution: This pattern occurred quite averagely across the whole year considering the small number of total occurrence.
Vehicles Type: Only 4 (or more) axles trucks.
Hypothesis: This pattern might originally belong to the Passing by pattern, but due to some reasons, they had to go to the entrance first before the formal pass. Although they first left 2 records at the entrance, the unchanged car-ids may suggest that they didn’t really leave the Preserve?
Pattern 3: Pass two camping areas in one entry.
Figure: Pattern Overview (Pass two camping areas in one entry)
Route: This pattern happened 25 times during that year. All vehicles in this pattern first visited camping1 and then past one of other camping areas.
Speed/Stop: their lasting time varied from tens of hours to about one month, and most of the lasted for a short time (less than one day). For each entry, only small part of time was spent in the camping1 and the major part was still the second camping area they visited.
Occurrence Distribution: This pattern also only occurred May to October of each year, which coincided with the peak period of the normal camping pattern.
Vehicles Type: 2 axles cars and 2 or 3 axles truck.
Hypothesis: The reason why these vehicles all firstly visited camping1 is not suggested in the dataset. Camping1 is not the nearest camping area to the entry point for all in this pattern. So they must have some purpose (maybe research) to visit camping1. Except this feature, the characteristics of this pattern are quite similar with the normal Camping pattern.
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.
Pattern 1: Skipping gates
Figure: Pattern Overview (Skipping Gates)
Route: Vehicles entered at entrance1, visit ranger-stop1 and then left from entrance1.
Occurrence Distribution: This pattern only had one occurrence at 2015.07.10 at about 10:30 a.m. with 6 vehicles entering almost at the same time.
Speed/Stop: Although they almost entered at the same time, their stop times varied from 1 hour to 6 hours.
Vehicles Type: Only 2 axles car (or motorcycle)
Unusual Thing: They are not 2P, which means they should not be allowed to pass the “gate”. So somehow they bypassed the gate2 and visited the ranger-stop1.
Pattern 2: Car id not changed
Figure: Pattern Overview (Unchanged Car-ids)
Route: Vehicles’ car id did not change during their multiple entries to the preserve (One car id has more than 2 records at entrances). For each one, the route of each entry to the Preserve is almost the same.
Occurrence Distribution: The number of occurrences is small, but still the distribution is somehow similar to the normal Camping pattern.
Speed/Stop: Their
Vehicles Type: 2 axles cars, 2 or 3 axles truck, which is also the same with the normal camping pattern.
Unusual Thing: Their multiple entries were counted as one. Their car ids didn’t change when they entered/left the preserve.
Pattern 3: Staying for one year.
Figure: Pattern Overview (Staying For One Year)
Route: Vehicle only passed the entrance once, and then continuously visited camping 0 to 6.
Occurrence Distribution: Only one entry at 2015.06.05
Speed/Stop: It stayed in the preserve almost for one year.
Vehicles Type: 2 axles car (or motorcycle)
Unusual Thing: It entered the preserve once and then never left the preserve (not have any record at entrance after the first and only one). It may be the vehicle used by the rangers?
Pattern 4: Having 2 records in the same general-gate
Route: Vehicles entered by entrance4, passed general-gate 5 and 6, and then left at entrance2.
Occurrence Distribution: Only two entries at 2015.07.20 afternoon, and could be considered going together.
Speed/Stop: They both stayed for less than an hour. And the time intervals between 2 records at general-gate 5 and 6 were quite small (only 1 second)
Vehicles Type: Both were 2 axles cars (or motorcycles)
Unusual Thing: Both entries had two records at general-gate 5 and 6 respectively. According to the small time intervals, it should be purely the system bug.
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)
The large amount of human activities brought by Daily trips and camping might invade the habitat of the birds.
Noises of vehicles will also influence Pipits’ lives. And the noise level could be increased by mainly three reason, speed, number of cars and the car type. Moreover, almost all cars were over-speed.
As the result, we choose three types as following.
1. Day-trips and Camping (The number of cars was large and the tourists may affect birds. There were at most over 300 vehicles in camping areas, and this human activity will influence the inhabitation of the animals there.)
2. Passing through the Preserve (The number of cars was large and there were cars with more than 3 axles.)
3. Transportation for Ranger Stop (Besides the noise, the engineering in the dark reflected by this transportation pattern may do some harm to the Preserve environment.)