19th International CODATA Conference
Category: Knowledge Discovery
Monica Wachowicz (Monica.Wachowicz@wur.nl)
Wageningen UR, Centre for Geo-Information, The Netherlands
http://www.geo-informatie.nl/
The main goal of a Geographic Knowledge Discovery (GKD) process is to identify,
associate, and understand interesting and unanticipated spatio-temporal patterns
in very large data sets that can be used to infer the location, identity, and
relationships among spatial objects and events. Every GKD process has its unique
goals and characteristics, to which interaction forms and visual representations
need to be tailored according to specific user needs for the exploration, synthesis,
confirmation, or presentation of spatio-temporal patterns. As with any knowledge
discovery process, GKD is characterized as a multi-step process in which data
mining plays a central role. Traditional spatial analysis tools are inadequate
for handling the increasing data availability and the complexity of mining spatio-temporal
patterns within a GKD process. Geographic Knowledge Discovery represents an
important research direction in the development of new generation of spatial
analysis tools. Some attempts on developing methods an associated tools for
a GKD process have already shown how difficult is to make use of appropriate
interaction forms, visual representations and mining tasks in order to allow
users to dynamically construct geographic knowledge. From a system perspective,
the issues are related to effectively support user-data interactions in both
spatial and temporal domains, as well as the development of useful interface
metaphors that can support interactive visual representations and data mining
tasks in order to amplify user cognition. From a user perspective, the main
issue is to make a GKD process very flexible and facilitate intuitive exploration
of spatio-temporal patterns using very large data sets.
This paper describes a tool prototype (Land Use Change Explorer), which was designed to allow different users to generate "GKD process tracking” (discovering land use change patterns) and “GKD process steering" (understanding uncertainty in these patterns as the process unfolds). The first section briefly describes the GeoInsignt approach used for the development of the prototype, previously described in Wachowicz (2001). Section 3 describes the complexity involved in the discovery of patterns in land use changes, with emphasis on the design of a GKD process. Section 4 describes the Land Use Change Explorer, its interaction forms, visual representations and mining tasks. From a system perspective, the prototype allows users to perform a series of steps of a GKD process, from selecting appropriate data sets; selecting proper representations to visualize land use change patterns; choosing sequences of data mining and visualisation tasks. From a user perspective, two types of users are used for the demonstration of the prototype. They represent two stakeholders: an agricultural policy maker and an urban planner.
Wachowicz,
M. (2001). GeoInsight: an approach for developing a knowledge
construction process based on the integration of GVis and KDD methods. In: Geographic data mining and knowledge discovery (Eds. Miller, H. J. and Han, J.),