Analysis and Modeling of Movement

Movement is a fundamental activity for understanding individual and population-level processes across different scales. Recent advances in the technologies used to record the movements of objects have resulted in an unprecedented amount of spatiotemporal geographic data, such that we are now beginning to observe near-continuous collection of data and ancillary information associated with them. New and improved methods are needed that can reliably analyze and predict movement processes. Frameworks for studying movement within a GIS context are beginning to emerge which are unifying the methodological and conceptual challenges. We discuss the analysis and modeling of movement from two perspectives, (1) understanding movement, and (2) modeling movement. Understanding movement will focus on how movement data is defined for use within a GIS, as well as the new challenges associated with applying geographic context to movement. Modeling movement will discuss the number of methods that have been implemented, ranging from the descriptive to the quantitative.