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DistributorTerraSeer
3317 Remington Drive
Crystal Lake, IL 60014
www.terraseer.com
As mapping systems move forward in technology, one advance quickly becomes the expected thing. If 3D is close, can 4D be far behind? There have been several attempts to include some time perspective time within GIS, but so far it has been in the management of utility networks and slide shows of screen shots.
A very long time ago, NDS (now Claritas) made an effort to market a lifestyle segmentation system call FutureVision. It was designed to show the evolution of customers over time by geography. The problem was that it wasn’t very visual, a limitation of the technology at the time.
A better approach to 4D is TerraSeer’s STIS, or Space Time Intelligence System. STIS combines traditional Business GIS functionality with the ability to step through data that has time as a variable.
STIS also directly links statistical views to the map so that charts, graphs and maps are all connected. Identifying or changing a variable in one immediately updates everything else, and you can see it happen. The statistical views include histograms, link charts and the usual stacked bar charts, etc.
An added advantage is that STIS works with all standard mapping and data formats, so while it can operate as a stand-alone product, it can also work with typical mapping and data products.
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This is a view of what you can see on the screen (map to the left). It is a presentation of two different datasets, the top of the screen showing working women across Illinois counties, the bottom showing the elderly across the same geography. The charts on both sides of each map are linked to the map and vice versa. Selecting anything in either map or chart will select the same thing in the other windows.
While this is not atypical of current mapping/statistical products, the difference here is time. Across the top of each view is a slider bar that lets you step through the data that is temporal and see it change as you move forward or backward in time.
Taking a look at the map of working women (below), you can see a slider bar just above the map that lets you move through time. To the left of the bar are the Play tools for play, step, stop and loop.
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At the right is a box showing just when in time the view is, in this case January 1, 1990. (1990/01/01).
STIS has the ability to export animation. Here's an example that lets you see the map move through time.
When you initiate “move through time,” the other windows that are linked to that data move too. It is like watching several movies at the same time.
There is a “nearby” feature that can show the statistical relationships of the geographies. So you could generate groupings that show high incidence of an attribute, and the adjacent low incidences, when the data are related. There is an integrated inclusion of statistical geography from the ground up within the product.
TerraSeer has taken a different approach to displaying data that is both spatial and non-spatial. By incorporating time as a basic function of the software, it allows the user to reach a better understanding of the data, and offers insight that hasn’t been generally available in mapping software.
