fromsparseGPS-datawithR–.PDFVIP

THIRD OPEN SOURCE GEOSPATIAL RESEARCH EDUCATION SYMPOSIUM (OGRS) Espoo, Finland, 10-13 June 2014 Geographic knowledge discovery from sparse GPS-data with R – spatio-temporal examination of Amazonian river transports 1 1 2 Henrikki Tenkanen , Maria Salonen , Matti Lattu , and Tuuli Toivonen1,3 1Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland 2Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki, Finland 3Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, Finland Abstract: Technological developments have made it viable to collect movement data of humans, vehicles and animals. A low-cost GPS-based monitoring system was developed to collect movement data of riverboats in Western Amazonia. The pilot monitoring system provides real-time location and time data that indicate where and when the collaborating vessels are navigating. We developed a tool to identify individual trips from the data and compute motion parameters such as speed, change of speed and the direction of movement. The pilot monitoring system was tested to analyze different spatio-temporal transportation characteristics of the local riverboats in Western Amazonia during the year 2012. The aim of this case study was to explore the seasonal and directional variation in the transportation characteristics along the rivers. Furthermore, we analyzed the relationship between the water height of the rivers and the travel speed of individual journeys. Results of the analysis show that navigation along the rivers indeed has seasonal and directional variation, and that the river morphology seems