Representing and Visualizing Travel Diary Data: A Spatio-temporal GIS Approach

Travel diary data (TDD) is an important disaggregate data source for transportation research. It is an example of multi-dimensional data that combines spatial, temporal, and attribute information. A proper representation of TDD can help researchers extract useful information from the data set. Current GIS is mainly designed to handle spatial and attribute data, lacking the representation of temporal aspect of spatial objects. In this paper, we present a time-enabled GIS design to represent and visualize TDD. Space-time path concept of time geography is adopted to organize the trips in TDD. The proposed design is implemented on the ArcGIS 8 platform. Under this approach, space-time paths can be generated from TDD and stored as a feature class in ESRI’s geodatabase data model. Using time as the third dimension, visualization of space-time path is provided in a customized ArcScene environment. This spatio-temporal GIS design offers an effective approach for representation and visualization of TDD. It also provides researchers with useful tools to explore and extract spatio-temporal information hidden in TDD.