Interactive visual tools to explore spatio-temporal variation

Abstract

CommonGIS is a developing software system for exploratory analysis of spatial data. It includes a multitude of tools applicable to different data types and helping an analyst to find answers to a variety of questions. CommonGIS has been recently extended to support exploration of spatio-temporal data, i.e. temporally variant data referring to spatial locations. The set of new tools includes animated thematic maps, map series, value flow maps, time graphs, and dynamic transformations of the data. We demonstrate the use of the new tools by considering different analytical questions arising in the course of analysis of thematic spatio-temporal data.