A spatial data science framework for movement analytics

Speaker: Professor Somayeh Dodge
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Wednesday, March 20, 2019
3 PM @ 1022 HN
No RSVP Required

Abstract. Movement of individuals is the driving force behind the form and function of many ecological and human systems. Identification and analysis of patterns of movement that may relate to behavior or interaction of individuals is a fundamental first step in understanding these systems. With advances in IoT and the ubiquity of smart connected sensors to collect movement and contextual data, we now have access to a wealth of geo-enriched high-resolution tracking data. These data promise new forms of knowledge and insight into movement of humans, animals, and goods, disease outbreak, or effects of human activity on behavior of competing species. To take advantage of the evolution in our data, effective representations and analytical approaches are necessary to reveal and communicate important patterns in spatiotemporal data sets and inform us about how individuals interact in social and ecological systems. This study presents a data science framework and attendant methods for analysis, modeling, and mapping movement as a multidimensional process that involves space, time, context, and scale.

Short Biography. Somayeh Dodge is Assistant Professor of Geographic Information Science (GIScience) at the Department of Geography, Environment, and Society at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Previously, she worked as Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. She completed two postdoctoral research on Computational Movement Analytics at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geodetic Engineering, at the Ohio State University and the GIScience Center of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, where she did her PhD in Geography with specialization in GIScience. She received her MSc degree in GIS Engineering and her BSc degree in Geomatics Engineering at the K.N. Toosi University of Technology in Iran. Somayeh serves on the Editorial Board of the Geographical Analysis journal and the Journal of Spatial Information Science. Her research focuses on understanding and predicting movement, through spatiotemporal analytics, modeling, and visualization. Her work on movement visualization was featured at the recent 2018 ESRI User Conference plenary session.