RGS Annual Conference 2010

Today is RGS day, actually RGS has been on since Tuesday this week. RGS is the Royal Geographical Society: 'We are the learned society and professional body for geography'. The annual conference of course is a big event, prestigious and well attended we hope. THe official twitter tag for this conference is #RGSIBG10. So look out for this to follow the latest news on the day.

I will be presenting a paper in the session 143 organised by James Cheshire from spatialanlaysis. The session title is: Postgraduate Session: Analysing and Visualizing Social Change

THe paper I will be presenting is on aspects of routine migration in the city, the daily migration from home to work and changes in location on short term. I will be using both, the study using GPS to trace individuals in urban areas as well as the more recent twitter mined data with the New City Landscapes to illustrate these aspects. Important key elements will be time obviously, but also a number of aspects of repetition, memory and the creation of identity. There will also be a focus on visualisation using the Hagerstrand time-space aquarium.

The abstract of the paper:
The research project investigates temporal spatial patterns of citizens. For the study we are using GPS technology to track participants over a longer period to record repetitive activities. The collected data, through the GPS has a timestamp and a location, serves well this purpose. However the challenge is the visualisation and the interpretation of the data. To approach this problem the ‘technical’ GPS data is complemented with individual information collected through interviews and mental maps. This set of data helps to create a context, in which the aspects of temporal experience can be studied as an additional dimension to urban life. Visualisation concentrates on time budget in the spatial context taking location features into account as part of the memory as well as the creation of identity. For visualisation purposes a number of approaches are used, from time-space aquariums to animations.