Visual Tools for the Study of Urban Mobility

Abstract

In the modern world, the use of mobile devices and web services is rapidly becoming part of our everyday life. By using most of services on smart devices, a user leaves digital footprints—a precise data in terms of spatial and temporal location. Semantic information about places helps understand the reason why person has visited that place. Collection and further analysis of information of when, where and why a person has performed activities can reveal patterns in land use and urban mobility. !is dissertation explores diverse visualization techniques suited for representing time-spatial information, using static and interactive applications. !rough the use of maps along with the narrative the user may reveal knowledge from a set of raw data. For that reason the dissertation starts by looking at theory and existing visual methods related to the representation of spatial and temporal data, as well as visualization of meanings of places. !en it describes principles and methods of the design process. !e "rst part of the dissertation presents visual artifacts that help understand urban mobility, through the visualization of the data related to the use of public transport. !e developed visualization model, along with the map, reveals patterns of abnormally high use of buses in urban area. Visual exaggeration, which caused by the use of the blob technique, makes it e#- cient in general views, while in zoomed views the representation transforms in a rigorous visualization. !e second part of the dissertation covers visualization methods to represent semantic information. It starts with the exploration of visual methods that represent a organic shape of clusters of POIs. !en it describes the di$erent approaches to use of typography to represent POI and category names. !e combination of presented techniques, plotted on the map, serves for displaying the city from the perspective of the user. !e "nal visualization helps to understand how urban area is used by its residents.