Entry Name: "VRVis-Matkovic-MC1"

VAST Challenge 2017

Mini-Challenge 1

Team Members:

Michael Beham, VRVis Research Center, Vienna, Austria, Beham@VRVis.at PRIMARY

Silvana Podaras, VRVis Research Center, Vienna, Austria, podaras@vrvis.at

Rainer Splechtna, VRVis Research Center, Vienna, Austria, Splechtna@VRVis.at

Denis Gracanin, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, gracanin@vt.edu

Kresimir Matkovic, VRVis Research Center, Vienna, Austria, Matkovic@VRVis.at

Student Team: NO

Tools Used:

Python scripts: path properties analysis.

ComVis: a visual analytics research tool developed at VRVis Research Center.

Matlab scripts: data processing and trajectories.

Microsoft Excel: data analysis.

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

80h

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

Video

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1K_OL3S7HTCMS1YTHhOQ1hNdzg

Questions

MC1.1 – “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.

The visitors can be divided (based on the dataset) into four mutually exclusive groups: Rangers, Campers, Drive-through and Other visitors. We identified typical daily patterns occurring within each group by exploring the traffic trajectories using ComVis tool and analyzing path properties (e.g., speed, average time) using Python scripts. The four main groups were divided, when feasible, into smaller subgroups. For example, Campers group was divided into Daily-visitors, One-day-campers and Multiple-day-campers subgroups. The following daily patterns were identified:

Pattern 1: Drive-through traffic

Drive-through traffic crosses the preserve from one entrance to another, without stopping or spending additional time along the trajectories. Some general-gates and ranger-stops are passed, but only because this is the only way to reach a specific exit.

All vehicle types pass through the preserve, but vehicle types 4, 5 and 6 are exclusively drive-through traffic. There are preferred trajectories for drive-through traffic, likely the shortest trajectories to pass the preserve (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Vehicle types 4, 5 and 6 pas exactly two checkpoints (to enter and exit the preserve) and use one of two trajectories.

Pattern 2: Daily visitors

Daily visitors enter the preserve and visit several checkpoints before leaving. Unlike Drive-through traffic, they stop or spend additional time along the trajectories, from several hours to less than a day. They spend some time at campsites but don't stay overnight (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Trajectories of daily visitors.

Pattern 3: Overnight visitors

Overnight visitors stay at the preserve exactly one night and stay at a campsite. They leave the preserve the following day (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Trajectories of overnight campers.

Pattern 4: Rangers

Rangers always start and end their shifts at the ranger base. They have long and short shifts, starting in morning, midday and evening. There are two particularly long shifts with exactly 49 checkpoints. The checkpoints are always visited in exactly the same order, i.e., using the one long trajectory for each of the two shifts (139 times over the year). Some rangers have late long shifts starting in afternoon and ending after midnight that use one of the two long trajectories (Figure 4 and Figure 5).

Figure 4: Trajectories used by the rangers always start and end at the ranger base, indicated by the dark-red color of the heatmap at the road leaving the ranger base. The rangers never leave the preserve.

Figure 5: Ranger shifts with 49 checkpoints.

Pattern 5: Busses

Vehicle types 5 and 6 travel the preserve along regular trajectories, and do it regularly over the year, with more visits in spring and summer than in autumn and winter. Both vehicle types drive along the same trajectories and never visit the camping sites. It is likely that the vehicles are service busses bringing the visitors to the preserve (Figure 6).

Figure 6: Busses (vehicle types 5 and 6) travel the preserve regularly along the same trajectories, without visiting the campsites.

Pattern 6: Traffic jam and slow-downs

A lot of traffic travels the north section of the preserve, i.e., general-gate1, general-gate2, ranger-stop1 and ranger-stop0. This happens throughout the year.

Furthermore, there is a slow-down between general-gate7 and general-gate4 as well as between general-gate7 and entrance 3. 20% or more of the vehicles passing between these checkpoints travel slower than the average speed between these checkpoints.

Only vehicle types 1, 2 and 3 are slowed down between general-gate7 and entrance 3. That indicates a specific sight-seeing location of interest to visitors, but not to drive-through traffic.

All vehicle types slow down between general-gate4 / general-gate7. That indicates heavy traffic and thus traffic jams are common.

MC1.2 – 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: Yearly and weekly visitors

During a year, the number of visitors increases in spring, has its peak in late spring and summer, decreases in autumn and is lowest in winter (Figure 7). Weekends are busier than the other days of the week.

Figure 7: Visitors in July 2015 (left) vs. visitors in January 2016 (right). The disc sizes represent the number of visitors passed a checkpoint in a month.

Pattern 2: Multiple-day-campers

Multiple-day-campers stay for several days and visit one or more camping sites, where they stay for more than one night each. Eventually, they drive around the preserve and pass several checkpoints to either explore the preserve or change the campsite (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Trajectories of multiple-day-campers.

MC1.3 – 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: Multiple-day-campers with the same pattern occurring over several days

A vehicle enters and leaves the preserve several times and keeps the same ID. That should not happen, as each vehicle should surrender their ticket with the RF tag when exiting the preserve. Furthermore, this vehicle always repeats the same driving pattern when visiting the preserve. It always passes the same checkpoints to reach Camping6, stays there for two days, leaves the preserve in exactly the same manner via entrance0 and returns exactly at the fifth day to repeat this pattern. The vehicle has a very long log with 98 log entries (Figure 9).

Figure 9: A vehicle entering and exiting the preserve several times with repeating driving pattern (98 checkpoints in total).

Pattern 2: Campers with abnormally long logs

One vehicle enters the preserve and stays for the whole year or longer, as it does not leave before the records end (Figure 10). Another vehicle has very large checkpoint count of 281 checkpoints (Figure 11).

Figure 10: Trajectory of a vehicle which stays almost a year in the preserve.

Figure 11: Trajectory of a vehicle which has over 281 checkpoints logged.

Pattern 3: Vehicles passing the same entrance three times

There are six vehicles passing the same entrance three times in a row with a very similar pattern. The first two log entries happen in less than a minute after each other, then more than 10 hours pass and the third log entry is made. The first two log entries could come accidentally from a U-turn, but the long pause until the third log is suspicious. All of these turns are made by vehicle type 4, trucks with 4 or more axles. This pattern happens twice at entrance3 and once at all of the other entrances together. It is possible that for entrance3, these are trucks which bring something to the factories in the south of the preserve, stay there over night to be un-loaded and then leave the preserve again. It is likely some illegal activities are happening there over-night, such as bird-hunting or burying toxic substances (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Vehicles passing same entrance multiple times.

Pattern 4: Vehicle driving between checkpoints which are not directly connected

There is a vehicle traveling from ranger-stop1 to entrance3 without passing gate2. That is not possible if driving along the “official” roads of the preserve. Eventually, this vehicle left the road and drove illegally across the nature area of the preserve.

The vehicle IDs that drive not allowed routes are:

· 20150104020118-228

· 20150416040441-902

· 20150505020522-625

· 20150920030917-854

· 20151112031119-409

· 20151201031245-77

· 20151414041406-386

· 20151415031450-923

· 20151520021556-881

· 20151521021518-235

· 20152824032830-251

· 20152925022919-735

· 20153923043910-954

· 20154702044723-914

· 20154901044910-777

· 20154907044911-419

· 20155201025245-696

· 20162219032229-226

· 20162401032410-101

· 20162419042411-322

· 20163016033037-38

· 20164531024545-131

· 20165003035005-470

Pattern 5: Type 4 vehicle drives illegal route regularly

There are vehicles which are not ranger vehicles, but nonetheless pass gates. In some cases, those could be accidental log entries caused by U-turns. But one particular pattern occurs 23 times over the year, between 2:00am and 5:00am, a type 4 vehicle (truck) is entering the preserve from entrance3, passes gate6, gate5, and gate3 to end up at ranger stop 3. After 10 to 15 minutes, it drives back using the same route (Figure 13).

Figure 13: The illegal trajectory of a type 4 vehicle entering the ranger-stop after a gate. The pattern including timing and the ID’s of the vehicles which use this route were identified with Python scripts.

Pattern 6: Type 1 vehicle visits ranger-stop 1

At 10:30 am on Friday, 10 July 2015, several type 1 vehicles drove from entrance1 to ranger-stop1 without visiting gate2. This is interesting because ranger-stop1 can only be visited by passing gate2. In the afternoon (12:08 pm – 4:30 pm) the vehicles drove back to entrance1.

MC1.4 –– 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. Many visitors in spring and summer (when there is mating and breeding season).

2. Excessive drive-through traffic.

3. Traffic jams.