CLUSTERING-BASED APPROACHES TO THE EXPLORATION OF SPATIO-TEMPORAL DATA

Abstract. As one spatio-temporal data mining task, clustering helps the exploration of patterns in the data by grouping similar elements together. However, previous studies on spatial or temporal clustering are incapable of analysing complex patterns in spatio-temporal data. For instance, concurrent spatio-temporal patterns in 2D or 3D datasets. In this study we present two clustering algorithms for complex pattern analysis: (1) the Bregman block average co-clustering algorithm with I-divergence (BBAC_I) which enables the concurrent analysis of spatio-temporal patterns in 2D data matrix, and (2) the Bregman cube average tri-clustering algorithm with I-divergence (BCAT_I) which enables the complete partitional analysis in 3D data cube. Here the use of the two clustering algorithms is illustrated by Dutch daily average temperature dataset from 28 weather stations from 1992 to 2011. For BBAC_I, it is applied to the averaged yearly dataset to identify station-year co-clusters which contain similar temperatures along stations and years, thus revealing patterns along both spatial and temporal dimensions. For BCAT_I, it is applied to the temperature dataset organized in a data cube with one spatial (stations) and two nested temporal dimensions (years and days). By partitioning the whole dataset into clusters of stations and years with similar within-year temperature similarity, BCAT_I explores the spatio-temporal patterns of intra-annual variability in the daily temperature dataset. As such, both BBAC_I and BCAT_I algorithms, combined with suitable geovisualization techniques, allow the exploration of complex spatial and temporal patterns, which contributes to a better understanding of complex patterns in spatio-temporal data.