An Integrated Approach for the Analysis and Visualization of Moving Objects

1. Introduction Traditional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) assume a world that only exists in the present (Peuquet, 1999). By including a temporal component in a GIS we may ask additional types of questions of spatial data that would benefit from visualization for interpretation. For example, we may wish to understand how a particular species utilizes different types of environments during different periods, i.e., what seasonal changes does a species exhibit; or we may wish to understand how human activity might affect the social structure of a species, as any disruption in social behaviour of a species may ultimately affect the social structure of a population and ultimately reproduction will be affected (Stenhouse et al., 2005).