Development of a Web-Based Geographical Information System for Interactive Visualization and Analysis of Container Itineraries

The paper describes an advanced prototype of a web-based geographical information system for user-friendly, interactive and efficient visualization of containers travelling over the world. The prototype uses ConTraffic Oracle Data Base (DB), where more than 300 000 container’s events are archived daily. The DB contains currently around one billion container movements. In addition, geographical data about the used locations/ports was collected and stored in the same DB on which the prototype is implemented. The prototype system provides users with container traffic information for specific date range, presented in interactive geographical and tabular mode. As a result, the prototype makes efficient visualization for easy visual analysis of container movements and status. The system used in this study gathers in quasi real-time online data from open sources, processes and stores it in DB. Using the proposed GIS application the user can access any time the DB and review on a map the itinerary of a specific container in specific date range, interact with the geographical presentation to receive specific details for the container for the used ports and review the itinerary details in interactive tabular presentation.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

Using ECA rules to implement mobile query agents for fast-evolving pure P2P database systems

Using ECA rules to implement mobile query agents for fast-evolving pure P2P database system

The generalized pre-grouping transformation: Aggregate-query optimization in the presence of dependencies

One of the recently proposed techniques for the efficient evaluation of OLAP aggregate queries is the usage of clustering access methods. These methods store the fact table of a data warehouse clustered according to the dimension hierarchies using special attributes called hierarchical surrogate keys. In the presence of these access methods new processing and optimization techniques have been recently proposed. One important such optimization technique, called Hierarchical Pre-Grouping, uses the hierarchical surrogate keys in order to aggregate the fact table tuples as early as possible and to avoid redundant joins. In this paper, we study the Pre-Grouping transformation, attempting to generalize its applicability and identify its relationship to other similar transformations. Our results include a general algebraic definition of the Pre-Grouping transformation along with the formal definition of sufficient conditions for applying the transformation. Using a provided theorem we show that Pre-Grouping can be applied in the presence of functional and inclusion dependencies without the explicit usage of hierarchical surrogate keys. An additional result of our study is the definition of the Surrogate-Join transformation that can modify a join condition using a number of dependencies. To our knowledge, Surrogate-Join does not belong to any of the Semantic Query Transformation types discussed in the past. 1

ConTraffic Visual Analytics in Support to Customs Risk-Analysis

Customs risk analysis is crucial for detecting fraud and contraband goods in the massive flows of internationally traded goods. Most of non-bulk goods are transported in shipping containers and, as customs can control only about 2% of them, efficient customs risk analysis is crucial. Recently EU customs got access to massive volumes of shipping containers traffic data which can assist their risk assessment process. In order to support EU customs in this domain the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has developed the ConTraffic visual analytics application which is currently used by EU customs on an experimental basis. This paper presents the main architectural elements of the application and some visualization and user-interaction techniques employed that proved to be appropriate for analyzing tens of thousands of container traffic data.JRC.E.5-Transport and Border Securit

Customs Risk Analysis through the ConTraffic Visual Analytics tool

Customs risk analysis is crucial for detecting fraud and contraband goods in the massive flows of internationally traded goods. Most of non-bulk goods are transported in shipping containers and, as customs can control only about 2% of them, efficient customs risk analysis is crucial. In support to EU customs, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has developed the ConTraffic visual analytics research prototype that is currently used by EU customs on an experimental basis. This paper presents the main architectural elements of this application and some of the custom-made visualization and user-interaction techniques employed in order to help customs explore the large volumes of shipping container data and perform route-based risk analysis. Moreover, we validate the usefulness of this application with illustrative examples of route-based risk analysis workflows than can be performed with our system.JRC.E.5-Transport and Border Securit

Visualization of Container Movements Through a Web-Based Geographical Information System

The paper describes an advanced prototype of a web-based geographical information system enabling interactive visualization of container movements. It implements multiple data selection mechanisms and presentation methods, one of which is the geographical visualization on a map of the locations where the container events occurred. Key features of the system include the visualization on the map of critical aspects of the data and the semantic summarization of the records while allowing the user to drill-down to all the details available. Risk analysts dealing with the container traffic can use the system through a regular web browser and easily find and understand the information they are looking for. Such a system is expected to allow them to make better and faster decisions.JRC.G.4-Maritime affair

An Interactive Web-Based Geographical System in Assisting Location Matching Decisions

This paper describes an advanced prototype of a web-based geographical information system used for association of text strings describing locations with real-world geographical locations. The prototype was developed for the ConTraffic system that contains more than one billion text records describing events about cargo containers. The raw record contains a textual string describing the location where a cargo container event took place. To be able to use this raw data for analysis and visualization of the behavior of cargo containers, the location text strings need to be matched to real-world locations with known coordinates. We call this process “location cleaning”. The prototype allows the user to “clean” multiple location text strings through an interactive geographical, user-friendly and efficient web-based interface.JRC.G.3-Maritime affair

MAC: Conceptual Data Modeling for OLAP

In this paper we address the issue of conceptual modeling of data used in multidimensional analysis. We view the problem from the end-user point of view and we describe a set of requirements for the conceptual modeling of realwofid OLAP scenarios. Based on those requirements we then define a new conceptual model that intends to capture the static properties of the involved information. In its definition we use a minimal set of well-understood OLAP concepts like dimensions, levels, hierarchies, measures and cubes. The central concept of the model is the Multidimensional Aggregation Cube (MAC), which gives a broad and flexible definition to the notion of a multidimensional cube. We evaluate our model against other existing multidimensional models and show that MAC offers a unique combination of modeling skills. Our main contribution is the definition of the basic concepts of our model; although the set of requirements and the evaluation of all related models against those requirements represent an additional result