ISSS608 2016-17 T3 Assign CHEN YINJUE
VAST Challenge 2017 : Help Rose-Crested Blue Pipit
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Background
Mistford, a mid-size city, locates to the southwest of a large nature preserve. The city has a small industrial area with four light-manufacturing endeavors. Recently, it is found that the number of nesting pairs of the Rose-Crested Blue Pipit, a popular local bird due to its attractive plumage and pleasant songs, is decreasing! What happened to Rose-Crested Blue Pipit's habitat? It is time for us to act to detect reasons and save the birds!
The Boonsong Lekagul Nature Preserve is used by people for day-trips, overnight camping or sometimes just passing through to access main thoroughfares on the opposite sides of the preserve. Vehicles entering and exiting the preserve must pay a fee based on their number of axles (personal auto, recreational trailer, semi-trailer, etc.) and therefore generate a data stream with entry/exit timestamps and vehicle type. There are also other locations in the park that register traffic passing through, which includes gate, general-gate, camp site, ranger-stop and ranger-base. All these locations have sensors to record vehicles entering/exiting/passing by.
When vehicles enter the Preserve, they must proceed through a gate and obtain a pass. The gate categorizes vehicles as follows:
• 2 axle car (or motorcycle)
• 2 axle truck
• 3 axle truck
• 4 axle (and above) truck
• 2 axle bus
• 3 axle bus
Vehicles receiving a pass with a “P” appended to their category are park service vehicles that have access to all parts of the Preserve. Currently, the Preserve vehicles are only 2 axle trucks, so they are designated as “2P” vehicle type.
There are five types of sensors recording data.
• Entrances. All vehicles pass through an Entrance when entering or leaving the Preserve.
• General-gates. All vehicles may pass through these gates. These sensors provide valuable information for the Preserve Rangers trying to understand the flow of traffic through the Preserve.
• Gates. These are gates that prevent general traffic from passing. Preserve Ranger vehicles have tags that allow them to pass through these gates to inspect or perform work on the roadway beyond.
• Ranger-stops. These sensors represent working areas for the Rangers, so you will often see a Ranger-stop sensor at the end of a road managed by a Gate. Some Ranger-stops are in other locations however, so these sensors record all traffic passing by.
• Camping. These sensors record visitors to the Preserve camping areas. Visitors pass by these entering and exiting a campground.
Now, it’s suspected that some of the behaviours of vehicles should take responsibilities for the decline of number of nesting pairs of the birds. To prove the hypothesis, we would try to perform data visualization and hopefully can get some insights by finding patterns of vehicles behaviours so that we can suggest to help prevent possible further damages to Rose-Crested Blue Pipit’s habitat and hence save the birds!
