Evaluation of the visibility of vessel movement features in trajectory visualizations

There are many visualizations that show the trajectory of a moving object to obtain insights in its behavior. In this user study, we test the performance of three of these visualizations with respect to three movement features that occur in vessel behavior. Our goal is to compare the recently presented vessel density by Willems et al. with well-known trajectory visualizations such as an animation of moving dots and the space-time cube. We test these visualizations with common maritime analysis tasks by investigating the ability of users to find stopping objects, fast moving objects, and estimate the busiest routes in vessel trajectories. We test the robustness of the visualizations towards scalability and the influence of complex trajectories using small-scale synthetic data sets. The performance is measured in terms of correctness and response time. The user test shows that each visualization type excels for correctness for a specific movement feature. Vessel density performs best for finding stopping objects, but does not perform significantly less than the remaining visualizations for the other features. Therefore, vessel density is a nice extension in the toolkit for analyzing trajectories of moving objects, in particular for vessel movements, since stops can be visualized better, and the performance for comparing lanes and finding fast movers is at a similar level as established trajectory visualizations

Evaluation of the visibility of vessel movement features in trajectory visualizations

There are many visualizations that show the trajectory of a moving object to obtain insights in its behavior. In this user study, we test the performance of three of these visualizations with respect to three movement features that occur in vessel behavior. Our goal is to compare the recently presented vessel density by Willems et al. with well-known trajectory visualizations such as an animation of moving dots and the space-time cube. We test these visualizations with common maritime analysis tasks by investigating the ability of users to find stopping objects, fast moving objects, and estimate the busiest routes in vessel trajectories. We test the robustness of the visualizations towards scalability and the influence of complex trajectories using small-scale synthetic data sets. The performance is measured in terms of correctness and response time. The user test shows that each visualization type excels for correctness for a specific movement feature. Vessel density performs best for finding stopping objects, but does not perform significantly less than the remaining visualizations for the other features. Therefore, vessel density is a nice extension in the toolkit for analyzing trajectories of moving objects, in particular for vessel movements, since stops can be visualized better, and the performance for comparing lanes and finding fast movers is at a similar level as established trajectory visualizations

Formalisation d'un environnement d'aide à l'analyse géovisuelle: Application à la sécurité et sûreté de la maritimisation de l'énergie

The maritime space is still a sensitive area due to many accidents and dangers, such as collisions or pirate attacks. In order to ensure the control of safety and security of this area, it is essential to study near real-time movement information (surveillance) or past events (analysis). Controllers and analysts are then faced to large sets of data, which must be studied with systems using maps and other visualizations. However, these tools are limited in terms of analysis capacities. Using geovisual analytics could be used to improve pattern identification, anomalies detection and knowledge discovery. However, due to the complexity of their use, most methods are still at the stage of research, and are not used yet in the operational word for studying maritime risks.In this context, we propose a geovisual analytics support system to guide users in the visualization and the analysis of maritime risks. Our research methodology is based on the formalization of use cases, of users and of several visualization methods. Ontologies and rules are used to create a knowledge-based system, to select adequate solutions for the visualization and the analysis of ships’ trajectories. Some examples for analyzing maritime risks are then presented to illustrate the use of such a system.L’espace maritime est encore aujourd’hui le contexte de nombreux accidents et dangers, comme des collisions ou des attaques pirates. Afin de garantir le contrôle de la sûreté et de la sécurité de cet espace, il est nécessaire d’étudier les données de mouvement en temps réel (surveillance) et les évènements passés (analyse). Contrôleurs et analystes sont alors confrontés à de grandes quantités de données, qui doivent être étudiées grâce à des systèmes utilisant des cartes et autres visualisations. Cependant, ces outils sont limités en termes de capacités d’analyse. L’utilisation de méthodes d’analyse géovisuelle pourrait alors faciliter la reconnaissance de motifs, la détection d’anomalies et la découverte de connaissances. Toutefois, en raison de leur complexité d’utilisation, plusieurs de ces méthodes n’ont pas dépassé le stade académique, et ne sont pas encore utilisées de manière opérationnelle dans l’étude des risques maritimes.Dans ce contexte, nous proposons un environnement d’aide à l’analyse géovisuelle, qui permet de guider l’utilisateur dans la visualisation et l’analyse d’informations pour l’étude des risques maritimes. Notre démarche de thèse se fonde sur la formalisation des cas d’utilisation, des utilisateurs et des méthodes de visualisation. Le recours à des ontologies et des règles permet de concevoir un système à base de connaissances, afin de proposer des méthodes adéquates pour la visualisation et l’analyse des trajectoires de navires. Nous illustrons cette proposition par plusieurs exemples d’analyse de risques en mer