Visualizing Cyclic Spatio-Temporal Patterns in Polar Coordinate System

Spatio-temporal phenomena used to be represented in Cartesian Coordinate Systems, and time is perceived linear. This way of representing time may not be appropriate for representing and analysing some types of natural and human phenomena, which occur in time cycles. This paper thus proposes the use of polar coordinate systems. Polar angles are used to represent time, which can be clock time at daily, monthly or yearly resolution. Polar distances are applied to represent moving extensions in space, i.e., distances of natural or human objects to their reference places (such as the home of a person or an animal, or the average temperature of a month). A human activity pattern example is used to illustrate and demonstrate how spatial and temporal patterns can be fully represented in polar coordinate systems. We will also argue that the proposed approach has great advantages in identifying the characteristics of spatio-temporal patterns.