An Interface Supporting Visualization and Comparison of Multiple GPS Traces

Supervisors: Ilyes Kadri, Simon Ruffieux, Denis Lalanne

Contact person: Simon Ruffieux

Student: Jiaxin Li

Project status: Ongoing

Year: 2024

In recent logistics, the analysis of trajectory is the key of more and more applications, to understand and manage the complex phenomenon of moving objects, such as post delivery services. In the context of Swiss Post, postmen typically deliver parcels according to routes generated by logistics software. However, despite the optimization of these algorithms, postmen do not always totally follow the routes 100%. Some of the experienced postmen know their delivery areas well and may deviate to some extent from planned routes. This raises critical questions: What are the causes of these deviations? What impact do these route modifications have on the overall delivery process?

The primary objective of this project is to propose and develop a web-based system that assists postal workers to visually explore the trajectory data, providing a comparative view between the planned routes and the executed ones by overlaying the two sets of trajectories on a map to easily identify and analyze deviations. The system will focus on an intuitive, interactive, and easy-to-understand interface that simplifies the process of reviewing and interpreting delivery data. As the system will need to display up to 300 stops of delivery packages per day, it will be a key point to ensure scalability to handle large volumes of delivery data in a compact or animated manner, and to deal with the overlap part of the trajectory. To achieve this, the research will evaluate different design concepts, as well as investigate various web visualization libraries and select the most suitable ones, considering the specific characteristics of postal delivery data and the tasks users need to perform. To assess the system’s effectiveness in meeting both development goals and the broader analytical objectives, two different user interface designs will be compared to determine which better achieves these objectives. Tasks of user experiment and a set of metrics will be developed to measure factors such as the usability of the interface, the system’s ability to process large trajectory volumes, the clarity of route overlapping, and the overall impact on decision-making regarding route planning and execution

Keywords: Visualisation, Interface, GPS traces, delivery, HCI

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