ST--ACTS: a spatio-temporal activity simulator

Creating complex spatio-temporal simulation models is a hot issue in the area of spatio-temporal databases [7]. While existing Moving Object Simulators (MOSs)address different physical aspects of mobility, they neglect the important social and geo-demographical aspects of it. This paper presents ST-ACTS, a Spatio-Temporal ACTivity Simulator that, using various geo-statistical data sources and intuitive principles, models the so far neglected aspects. ST-ACTS considers that (1)objects (representing mobile users)move from one spatio-temporal location to another with the objective of performing a certain activity at the latter location; (2)not all users are equally likely to perform a given activity; (3)certain activities are performed at certain locations and times; and (4)activities exhibit regularities that can be specific to a single user or to groups of users. Experimental results show that ST-ACTS is able to effectively generate realistic spatio-temporal distributions of activities, which make it essential for the development of adequate spatio-temporal data management and data mining techniques.