Spatio-temporal Rule Mining: Issues and Techniques

Recent advances in communication and information technology, such as the increasing accuracy of GPS technology and the miniaturization of wireless communication devices pave the road for Location–Based Services (LBS). To achieve high quality for such services, spatio–temporal data mining techniques are needed. In this paper, we describe experiences with spatio–temporal rule mining in a Danish data mining company. First, a number of real world spatio–temporal data sets are described, leading to a taxonomy of spatio–temporal data. Second, the paper describes a general methodology that transforms the spatio–temporal rule mining task to the traditional market basket analysis task and applies it to the described data sets, enabling traditional association rule mining methods to discover spatio–temporal rules for LBS. Finally, unique issues in spatio–temporal rule mining are identified and discussed.