This session provides an overview of functionality, techniques, and tips for managing, analyzing, and mapping space-time data with ArcGIS. Guidelines are provided for taking advantage of the core support for space-time data in ArcGIS Pro. In particular, insights into the visualization of space-time data are provided.

1. Working with Space-time Data in ArcGIS
Aileen Buckley

2. This session
• Visualizing temporal data
• Managing temporal data
• Analyzing temporal data
• Best practices are highlighted
with a check mark
•
• ArcUser article – Spring 2018
has a high-level overview


3. DEMO
Visualizing space-time data

4. Managing space-time data

5. Storing temporal data
• Store time stamps in a date field
- A field type that stores dates, times, or dates
and times
- Especially for large data
- Most efficient format for query / display
performance
- Supports more sophisticated database queries

ArcGIS supports
a wide range of
standard formats
and custom
formats

6. Storing range data
• Store data in a string or numeric fields
• For data that is not in “time” format
- Sequence, attributes, etc...
- Millions of years ago (ArcGIS display
date covers AD100 to AD10,000)
• Use numeric data in integer or float
format
• Set aliases for values
- 3rd day of week (value = 3), set alias to
“Tuesday”
- 20 MYA (value = 20), set alias to [field] &
“MYA”

• Ecological Marine Units – water depth

7. As separate features in a single feature class
• When the shape and/or
location of each feature
changes over time
• Store separate features
Moving
features
Features that move
over space
• Airplanes, boats,
vehicles
• People, animals
• Storm centers
Discrete
events
Events that happen at
specific locations
• Crimes
• Accidents
• Earthquakes,
lightening strikes,
volcanic events
Change /
growth
Features that change
condition over time
• Demographics
• Fire perimeters
• Flood extents

8. As features joined to a table
• When the shape and/or location of each feature is constant,
but attribute values change over time
• Store the changing attributes in a separate
(one-to-many) joined table
Stationary
recorders
Features that stay in one
place and record changes
• Weather stations
• Traffic sensors
• Stream gauges

9. Index temporal and range data
• Index the date or range field for faster query
performance
• Indexes are a property of the data that you can
set in Catalog
• Use the Add Attribute Index GP tool to add an
index to a field


10. When temporal data is not in date format
• Convert data to a date field type
• Use the Convert Time Field GP tool
- Converts Text/Number fields into a new Date field
- “July 09, 2016”  07/09/2016  MM/DD/YYYY
- Does not require you to add a new field first
The Date field can have a
custom format (e.g.,
MM dd, yyyy HH:mm:ss)
Change Output Time Type to
Text to do this
Convert the custom date to
a real date in a date field



11. When point in time data needs to be duration data
• Create an end time from the exiting start times
• Use the Calculate End Time GP tool
- Populates an end time field with the next record’s start time
- The last record will have
- For the last value, manually edit the end time if you know
what it should be

blah, blah, blah


12. When temporal data is stored in multiple columns
• Store temporal data in a row format (one time stamp per row)
- That is, duplicate features with different time stamps in separate rows
• Use the Transpose Fields GP tool
- Shifts data stored in columns into data stored in rows


13. When temporal data is in a separate table
• Create a one-to-one, many-to-one, or one-to-many join
• Use the Add Join GP tool
• For some GP tools, you will need to export the features (Copy Features GP tool) to
create a new feature class
- For example, Spatial Statistics and Space-Time Pattern Mining tools



14. When temporal data is in different time zones
• ArcGIS integrates data in different layers
across different time zones
- Layers in map can be in different time zones
• Convert data for same layer into the
same time zone
• Use the Convert Time Zone GP tool
- Converts time values recorded in a date field from
one time zone to another time zone

New York Los Angeles

15. When temporal data is stored in daylight savings time
• Store temporal data in standard time
- Multiple problems with DST
- Storing the time values in standard time
prevents loss or overlaps of data
- Prevents ambiguity in visualizations and
errors in analyses
• Use the Calculate GP tool to add or
subtract time
• Standardize on UTC1 or GMT2
- 1 Coordinated Universal Time
- 2 Greenwich Mean Time

• Regional differences
• Rules and boundaries change frequently
• Some DST zones adjust less than an hour
• 30 minute offset
• 45 minute offset


16. When you need to add or subtract from temporal data
• Use the Calculate GP tool to add or subtract time
- Python 3: !timefield!.replace(year=!timefield!.year + 10)
- Arcade: DateAdd( date, addValue, units)
https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html
https://developers.arcgis.com/arcade/function-reference/date_functions/


17. Section Subhead
Analyzing space-time data

18. Space-time data analysis in ArcGIS – 3 ways it is done

19. 1st approach
• Data for each time step is analyzed separately
• Results are presented as a single time enabled layer or a set of layers, one for each time
step

20. 1st approach – 3 ways it is done
1. All GP tools honor the time settings
- For time-enabled layers, only those features that fall temporally within the time extent set
in the time slider will be processed
- Similar to a selection or definition query
- Results are then displayed as a single layer on a map

21. 1st approach – 3 ways it is done
1. All GP tools honor the time settings
2. With some GP tools, the time attribute can be used as the case field to repeat the
analysis for each time step
- The case field is used to calculate statistics separately for each unique attribute value
(that is, each time step)
- Results are presented as a single layer, and time can be enabled on the case field in the
output feature class
- e.g., Mean Center and Directional Distribution

22. 1st approach – 3 ways it is done
1. All GP tools honor the time settings
2. With some GP tools, the time attribute can be used as the case field to repeat the
analysis for each time step
3. A model or script with an iterator to specifies that the analysis should be repeated
for each time step
- Results are presented as separate outputs, one for each time step
- The separate outputs can then be combined so that the final result can be time enabled
and visualized using the time slider control
- For feature classes, use Merge or Append
- For rasters, use a mosaic dataset

23. 2nd approach
• Data is analyzed using space-time constraints
• Results are presented as a single layer

24. The second approach
• Certain GP tools use a spatial weights matrix
• This defines feature relationships in terms of a
space-time window
- Specified critical distance and fixed interval in time
• Tools:
- Hot Spot Analysis – creates a map of clusters in both space
and time of significantly high (hot) or low (cold) values
- Cluster and Outlier Analysis – identifies the similarity (as the
spatial clustering of either high or low values) or the
dissimilarity (as spatial outliers) of features
- Spatially Constrained Multivariate Clustering – finds
spatially contiguous clusters of features based on a set of
feature attribute values and optional cluster size limits

25. 3rd approach
• Data for all time steps is analyzed both spatially and temporally
• Results are presented as a single layer or a space-time cube

26. 3rd approach
• Space-Time Pattern Mining Tools
- Require that the data be in a space-time cube
format
- Emerging Hot Spot Analysis – identifies hot and cold
spots and determines if they have a temporal trend
(new versus persistent versus historic hot spots)
- Local Outlier Analysis – determines if features have
belonged in clusters or been outliers over the entire
time extent of the dataset
- Time Series Clustering – partitions a collection of
time series, stored in a space-time cube, based on
the similarity of time series characteristics

30. 3rd approach
• Space-Time Pattern Mining Tools - Utilities
- Working with space-time cubes
- Create the cube from points or polygons
- Visualize the cube in 2D or 3D
- Fill Missing Values (Utilities toolset) – replaces
missing values with estimates based on spatial
neighbors, space-time neighbors, or time-series
values
• Space Time Cube Explorer Add-In can also be
used for visualization

31. More traditional time series analysis
• Take advantage of the extensibility of the ArcGIS platform
• Capabilities to easily transfer data to open-source analytical software
- Use ArcPy utility functions to analyze the data in Python
- For example, FeatureClassToNumPyArray
- Use the R-ArcGIS Bridge to analyze the data using R

32. Aileen Buckley
Mark Gilbert
Thank you!