ITEE Innovation Expo 2008 : Project Details

Peragro, a real time traffic visualisor.

Spatial internet applications are becoming more and more common. With the Google™ Maps API it is possible to embed interactive geospatial content into a web site with minimal effort. But since objects in general move through both space and time it is important to be able display this additional dimension if an accurate simulation is to be generated. More important than displaying is how this data can be stored for fast, efficient searches. This thesis looks at spatial databases and some of the methods for combining a temporal aspect with them. It then looks at developing a spatiotemporal web application, Peragro, based on a large amount of moving object data. Peragro uses 6 million data entries generated by 10,000 taxis over three days to generate realistic visualisations of traffic flows. With such a large dataset, it is quite possible to find the limiting factors within the technologies and what should be targeted for improvement. Pergro implements a quadtree display system to allow for the maximum amount of information to be gained from the minimal resolution. It is thus important to be able to determine whether this should be done quickly as well as finding efficient strategies for extracting the appropriate amount of information from the data. Through the development of Peragro, it has been possible to look at what are the limiting factors for spatiotemporal applications and how some strategies for improving the most critical areas.