Situation Assessment Using Results of Objects
Parameters Measurements Analyses in IGIS
Andrey Pankin1, Alexander Vodyaho2, Nataly Zhukova1
1
Saint-Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Scienc-
es, Research laboratory of object-oriented geo-information systems, Russia
2
Saint-Petersburg Electrotechnical University, Russia
aivodyaho@mail.ru, {pankin, gna}@oogis.ru
Abstract. The paper describes method for situations assessment based on re-
trieving information about similar earlier observed conditions. Situation is a set
of qualitative and quantitative characteristics that describe states of interrelated
objects. Object states are defined by measurement parameters. A method for
situation assessment is based on calculation of aggregated indices and their
comparison was developed. For calculating aggregated indices it is proposed to
use an algorithm for alphabetic description of time series that provide conven-
ient means for their comparison. For situations retrieval it is suggested to use
FCA methods. As a case study the results of ocean data analyses for calculating
temperature and salinity parameters of water area are presented.
Keywords: situation assessment, measurements analyses, summary indicators
1 Introduction
Nowadays Intelligent Geographic Information Systems (IGIS) are widely used
for solving different functional tasks. IGIS incorporates GIS interface as well as vari-
ous methods of artificial intelligence intended for solving certain intricate problems
including problem of decision making support. Decision support systems in IGIS are
aimed to provide end users with complex information about the solved problem as
well as with reasonable alternative decisions in real time with a pictorial rendition of
this information to let it be easily perceived and used.
One of the important tasks, that is solved in decision making support systems, is
situation assessment and awareness. Situation assesment is aimed to make situations
understandable by users. Situation awareness is the perception of the elements in the
environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning,
and the projection of their status in the near future [1]. Situation assessment represents
analysis of available information in order to get validated estimations of current sys-
tem state and probable direction and dynamic of its changing. In this context term
“system” can have wide interpretation: it can be used to describe dynamic technical or
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 135
environmental objects, set of interacting objects, analyzed phenomena, entities, or
environments.
Problem of situation assessment can be decomposed into two subtasks. The first
task is situation recognition and the second is making decision about system state. For
situation recognition an approach based on comparing situations to ones that were
earlier observed is widely used. To provide this knowledge base of situations a de-
scription is formed. Decision about system state is based on knowledge about recog-
nized situations. Various directions of situation development can be considered using
modeling tools or expert systems.
By now one of the key means for storing information about systems actual states
are measurements instruments that provide information about system parameters in
real time. Using these measurements ability to analyze the dynamic of a state evalua-
tion and control a system state is provided. There are several problems related with
measurements processing. First problem is great volume of data that has to be pro-
cessed in limited time. Second problem is that measurements have rather bad quality;
they are not coordinated in time and space and are implemented as non-stationary
time series. Consequently, highly specialized methods have to be used for measure-
ments processing. Third problem is a necessity to represent measurements as a set of
complex characteristics, so that they can be used in methods of situation assessment.
In the paper an approach to situation assessment based on comparison of situa-
tions is extended for using measurements of system parameters as one of important
information sources and approach to retrieval situations using formal concept anal-
yses (FCA) methods is proposed. In the second section general description of the
method for situation assessment based on measures analyses in presented. Following
sections provide detailed description of algorithms used in the general method. An
algorithm of alphabetic representation of time series given in section 3 is aimed to
represent time series in a form that provides easy mechanism for comparing parame-
ters. In section 4 the algorithm of identification of information valuable parameters
that allow ranging parameters according to information values is considered. In sec-
tion 5 algorithm for objects aggregated indicators calculating that takes into account
values of parameters measurements is presented. Algorithms for building and compar-
ing graphs that describe situations in terms of objects and their relations are discussed
in section 6. In section 7 application of Formal Concept Analysis methods for reveal-
ing earlier observed distinguishable situations are considered. As a case study task of
ocean parameters estimation using measurements provided by floating hydrographic
buoys is described.
2 Main definitions
FCA is a well-established technique in mathematics that is widely used for solv-
ing various tasks of intelligent data analyses. Standard FCA definitions are introduced
in [2, 3]. Given a formal context K (G, M , I ) , where G is called a set of objects,
M is called a set of attributes, and the binary relation I G M specifies which ob-
136 Situation Assessment in IGIS
jects have which attribute, the derivation operators () I are defined for A G and
B M as follows:
AI {m M | g A : g Im} ;
B I {m M | m B : g Im} .
A I is the set of attributes common to all objects of A and B I is the set of ob-
jects that share attributes of B . For simplicity operator ()' is used instead of () I .
The double application of ()' is a closure operator; it is extensive, idempotent, and
monotonous. Therefore, sets A' ' and B' ' are closed sets.
A formal concept of the context (G, M , I ) is a pair ( A, B) , where ( A G) ,
( B M ) , A B' , and B A' . In this case A A' ' and B B' ' . The set A is called
the extent and B is called the intent of the concept ( A, B) . In categorical terms a
formal concept is defined by its objects A or its attributes B .
A concept ( A, B) is a subconcept of (C, D) and (C, D) is a superconcept of
( A, B) if ( A C ) (equivalently, ( D B) ). For ( A, B) and (C, D) relations , ,
, and are defined and written as usual. ( A, B) is a lower neighbor of (C, D)
(notation is (A, B) (C, D) ) and (C, D) is an upper neighbor of (A, B) (notation is
(C, D) ( A, B) ) if ( A, B) (C, D) and there is no ( E, F ) : ( A, B) ( E, F )
(C, D) . The set of all concepts ordered by forms a concept lattice of the context K,
that is denoted by B(K ) . The relation defines edges in the covering graph of
B(K ) .
For building lattices while solving task of situations analyses formal context as a
set of objects G situations are considered, M is a set of situations characteristics,
I is an incidence relation between these sets. Each situation s is characterized by a set
of relevant objects E {Oi }iN1 and relations between objects R {ri, j }iN, j 1 , where N
is a total number of objects. For each object a set of parameters e {Pi }iM1 that de-
scribes objects state is defined.
3 General description of method for situation assessment
Situation assessment is based on comparing current conditions with the previous-
ly observed ones. Situation involves objects that can be technical or natural and rela-
tion between them. Relations are described for pairs of objects, for each relation its
type is defined. All types are to be described a priori in a vocabulary of subject do-
main. An object state is characterized with a set of parameters; values of parameters
are measured using various measurement instruments and are represented as time
series.
When solving problem of situation assessment it is necessary to provide an effec-
tive and efficient mechanism for situation comparing to retrieve similar ones. For
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 137
comparing two situations it is necessary to compare list of objects and their states and
relations between objects. Objects and relations between objects are reasonable to
represent as a graph, where vertexes of the graph are objects and edges of the graph
are relations.
For comparing two graphs a wide range of methods is developed. The most con-
venient algorithm for similar situations retrieval is based on graph edit distance. The
main idea of this algorithm is to define difference between graphs using a set of edit-
ing operations that are necessary for transforming one graph to the other. This method
is tolerant to errors and provides inexact graph matching. Algorithms for graph edit
distance calculation are described in [4]. When edges of graph are compared the result
is binary – if the relations that corresponds to the edges are equal then result of com-
parison is ‘1’ else the result is ‘0’. For comparing vertexes it is necessary to compare
objects associated with them. As each object is characterized with a set of parameters
to build object description it is necessary to solve two problems –to describe each
time series of parameters measurements in such a way that descriptions can be easily
compared and to define how to calculate aggregate characteristic of objects using
formed descriptions.
For describing parameters measurements it is proposed to use alphabetic repre-
sentation of time series. To build alphabetic representation method based on Symbolic
Aggregate Approximation (SAX) [5] is used. Strings that are composed with SAX-
based algorithms can be compared using string Edit Distance that is used in algo-
rithms of string inexact comparing [6].
For solving the second task Aggregated Indices Randomization Method (AIRM)
[7] can be applied that is targeting complex objects subjected to multi-criteria estima-
tion under uncertainty. The essence of application of AIRM consists in an aggregation
of single characteristics into one complex characteristic that is used for comparing
objects. One of the key tasks that is to be solved before ARIM method can be applied
is to define weights for objects parameters that are considered as indicators. Taking
into account that parameters are characterized with measurement time series for eval-
uation of time series information value a set of statistical characteristics is used [8].
General description of proposed method for situation assessment is given in Fig.1
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. Data base of graphs describing earlier observed situations, description of estimated situa-
tion, that includes E {Oi }iN1 is a set of objects, R {ri, j }iN, j 1 is a set of objects relations,
O {Pi }iM1 is set of objects parameters, P {(ti , xi )}iH1 is a time series of parameters measurements,
where H is a total number of measurements.
Output data. S {(si , qi )}Ti1 is a set of situations s that are similar to a defined situation s d with
similarity degree q .
Algorithm description
A. Building description of estimated situation
Step A1 build symbolic representation of objects parameters measurements Cˆ f symb ( P)
Step A2 Building descriptions of objects
calculate weights of parameters W {wi }iM according to information value
138 Situation Assessment in IGIS
~ ~
calculate estimations of aggregated indices for objects Q {Qi }iN1
B. Building graph for situation description
Step B1 Defining graph vertexes GV using formalized descriptions of objects
Step B2 Defining graph edges G D using formalized descriptions of objects relations
C. Situation estimation
Step C1. Reveling similar graphs of situation description in data base
Step C2. Ranging graphs according to degree of similarity S {(si , qi )}Ti1
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.1 General description of method for situation assessment
4 Algorithm of alphabetic representation of time series
Proposed algorithm of alphabetic representation is based on algorithm of Sym-
bolic Aggregate Approximation (SAX) described in [5]. In SAX for building symbol-
ic representation of time series approach based on application of Piecewise Aggregate
Approximation (PAA) is used. According to the algorithm time series are presented as
a sequence of segments using window of defined length. For each segment a set of
defined statistical characteristics are estimated. PAA can be considered as an attempt
to represent a time series in a form of windows line combination. The description of
the algorithm is given in Fig. 2. PAA representation of time series is converted into
symbolic representation. In SAX it is assumed that analyzed time series have normal
distribution, but measurements time series very often doesn’t satisfy this criterion. In
[9] the description of modification of SAX for time series with various distributions is
proposed. The modified procedure assumes, at first, estimation of measurements val-
ues interval. To avoid usage of values that contain noise and outliers for determining
border median values of K , minimum and maximum values are used. Second, inter-
val of values are split into equal intervals, each part corresponds to one level. Seg-
ments, which characteristics correspond to one interval, are the segments of one level
and they are described using same symbol from a priori defined alphabet (Fig. 3).
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. P p1, ..., p H is an initial time series, where H is a number of segments.
Output data. C c1, ..., c z is aPAA representation of time series.
Algorithm description
H
Step 1. calculate length of one segment l
z
Step 2 for ( i 1 ... z )
ci f ({c j }ljil ( j 1) 1 ) , where f is a function of calculating segment statistical characteristics
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.2 Algorithm for building PAA representation of time series
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 139
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. P p1, ..., p H is an initial time series, where H is a number of segments,
A a1, ..., ak is an alphabet for time series symbolic representation, B 1, ..., k 1 are levels of time
series representation.
Output data. Cˆ cˆ1, ..., cˆ z is asymbolic representation of time series.
Algorithm description
Step 1. calculate C using algorithm for PAA representation of time series
Step 2. calculate range of time series characteristic values [ Vl , Vh ], where Vl - low border, Vh - high
border
Step 3. calculate range of characteristics values for each level
Step 4. for ( i 1 ... w )
define alphabet symbol cˆi a j j 1 c j j
Step 5. concatenate symbols Cˆ {cˆi }iz1
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.3 Algorithm for building time series symbolic representation
By now many algorithms that allow to deal with strings, in particular, algorithms
of inexact string comparison, based on calculation of Edit Distance are developed.
Algorithms of string comparison are applied for qualitative evaluation of time series
similarity.
5 Algorithm of information valuable parameters identification
Each object is described by a set of various parameters. Degree of information
value of each parameter differs and it is necessary to take it into account when two
objects are compared. The degree of parameter information value is used to range
parameters in algorithm of calculating objects aggregated indices.
The proposed algorithm of calculating degree of parameter information value is
based on using a set of statistical characteristics. Depending on objects characteristics
different measures for time series described in [8] can be calculated. Most often the
following measures are used: mean, median, variance, standard deviation, interquar-
tile distance, skewness and kurtosis. The algorithm of ranging parameters is based on
the idea that most informative are measures that have maximum difference for differ-
ent objects. So mean distances between measures of parameters time series are calcu-
lated and according to them parameters are ranged and preliminary weight coeffi-
cients are defined. The proposed algorithm is given in Fig. 4.
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. E {Oi }i 1 is set of objects, O {Pi }i 1 is a set of measured objects parameters,
N M
where M is a total number of objects parameters, G {g i }U
i 1 is a list of time series measures, U is a
total number of measures.
Output data. P is a sorted set of parameters, W {wi }iM1 is a list of preliminary weight coeffi-
cients for parameters.
140 Situation Assessment in IGIS
Algorithm description
A. Calculating measures for parameters time series
Step A1. for each parameter (i 1 ... M )
for each object ( j 1 ... N )
calculate measures sij (s1ij , ..., sU
ij )
M M
calculate mean distance si
1
N (s s )
k 1 l 1
ik il
2
B. Ranging parameters
Step B1 for (i 1 ... M )
define preliminary weights wi si
Step B2 sort parameters according to preliminary weights P sort ({Pi }iM1 )
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.4 Algorithm for ranging parameters
6 Algorithm for objects aggregated indicators calculating
To calculate objects aggregated indicators based on set of parameters it is pro-
posed to use indices randomization method. ARIM is used to solve tasks of multiple
criteria decision making on the base of poor-quality input information. The main ad-
vantage of AIRM is its ability to cope with non-numeric (ordinal), non-exact (inter-
val) and non-complete information. When solving user’s tasks information about
objects parameters is often incomplete as parameters due to different reasons can’t be
gathered. Calculated in section 5 preliminary weights of parameters provide approxi-
mate estimation of parameters information value and therefor can’t be used directly
for calculating objects aggregated indicators. Preliminary parameters weights are used
to range parameters and thus provide ordinal information about parameters. This in-
formation can be effectively used in AIRM.
In ARIM three key steps are executed: i) building vector of single indicators; ii)
defining aggregative function; iii) defining weighs coefficients.
Main features of ARIM application for calculating objects indicators using meas-
urements are the following:
1. Results of symbolic representation of time series of parameters measurements
build according to algorithm described in section 3 are considered as list of objects
characteristics.
2. Single indicators for objects are functions of objects characteristics. They are
defined as normalizing power functions of degree one. When characteristic values
increase functions also increase.
3. An aggregative indicator is a synthesized function that characterizes each ob-
ject in general. It depends on weight coefficients and is represented in a form of linear
convolution of single indicators functions and weight coefficients.
4. As information I about objects parameters weights is incomplete, weight-
vector w (w1, ..., wm ) is ambiguously determined. In ARIM this vector is deter-
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 141
mined with accuracy to within a set w(I ) of all admissible weight-vectors. An uncer-
tain choice of a weight-vector from set w(I ) is modeled by a random choice of an
element of the set according to the concept of Bayesian randomization. Such random-
ization produces a random weight-vector w( I ) (w1 ( I ), ..., wm ( I )) , which is uniform-
ly distributed on the set w(I ) . Set w(I ) is reduced using ordinal and interval infor-
mation. Mathematical expectation of random weight coefficient wi (I ) may be used
as a numerical estimation of particular indicator qi significance. Then randomized
~( I ) ( w
weight-vector can be defined as w ~ ( I ),...,w
~ ( I )) . The precision of this esti-
1 M
mation is measured by standard deviation of the corresponding random variable.
The algorithm for objects summary indicators calculating is given in Fig.5.
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. E {O } is a set of objects, O {Cˆ }
N M
i i 1 is a set of symbolic representation of
i i 1
measured objects parameters, where M is a total number of objects parameters, Cˆ {cˆi }iz1 is a symbolic
representation of parameter, where z is a length of symbolic representation.
~ ~
Output data. Q {Qi }iN1 are estimations of objects aggregated indicators.
Algorithm description
Step 1. for each object ( 1, ..., N )
define Cˆ (cˆ1, ..., cM ) as set of initial characteristics
calculate vector of single indicators q (q1, ..., qM ) ,
0, cˆ j MIN j ,
cˆ j MIN j
q j q j (cˆ j ) , MIN j cˆ j MAX j ,
MAX j MIN j
1, cˆ j MAX j ;
MIN j and MAX j - minimum and maximum values of characteristic
~ (w
calculate randomized weight-vector for characteristics w ~ ,...,w
~ )
i 1 M
calculate aggregated indicator
m
q w~ (I )
~ ~( I )) Q(q ,..., q ; w
~ ~
Q (q; I ) Q(q; w 1 m 1 ( I ),..., wm ( I )) i i
i 1
calculate estimation of aggregated indicator
~
Q ( I ) EQ( I )
~ ~ ~
Step 2. form vector of aggregated indicators estimations Q (Q1, ..., QN )
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.5 Algorithm for objects aggregated indicators calculating
7 Algorithms for building and comparing situation graphs
A situation graph contains information about objects, a set of characteristic that
are sufficient for objects description, and relations between objects. Building a situa-
142 Situation Assessment in IGIS
tion graph assumes following main steps: i) making a list of objects that are signifi-
cant for situation description; ii) defining set of objects characteristics; iii) defining
set of admissible relations between objects; iv) building structure of the graph. All
tasks are enumerated but the last one is solved by experts manually. A set of objects
characteristics contains aggregated characteristics of measured parameters that are
defined in section 5 and it may also contain one or several additional characteristics.
Usually, as additional characteristics, time and earth coordinates of parameters meas-
urements are considered. The algorithm for building situation graph is given in Fig. 6.
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. E {Oi }i 1 is a set of objects, R {ri, j }iN, j 1 is a set of objects relations,
N
F { f i }Yi1 is a set of object characteristics, where Y is a total number of object characteristics.
Output data. G GV , GD is a situation graph, GV are graph vertexes and G D aregraph edges.
Algorithm description
Step 1. define empty graph GV [] , GD []
Step 2. create vertexes from objects GV E
Step 3. create edges for related objects GD R
Step 4 for each vertex vi GV (i 1, ..., N )
define attributes Avi av (Oi ) according to characteristics of object Oi
Step 5. for each edge di , j d (Oi , O j ) , i 1, ..., N , j 1, ..., N
if ( d i exists)
define attributes Adi ad (ri, j ) according to defined relation between objects Oi , O j
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.6 Algorithm for building situation graphs
Widely used methods for comparing graphs are based on calculation of graph edit
distance [1, 4]. The main idea of these methods is to find minimum number of graph
editing operations (edit path) that will allow the transformation one compared graph
to another. Edit distance d for graphs G1 and G2 can be defined as:
k
d (G1, G2 ) min
( e1 , ..., ek ) (G1 , G2 )
c(e ) , where are all possible edit paths, e is a
i 1
i
graph editing operation, c(e) is the cost of operation e . The key advantage of these
methods is their flexibility as methods are able to deal with any graphs and any types
of vertex and edge attributes. The standard set of graphs operations include following
operations: adding, removing and modifying elements.
The described group of methods allows finding optimal solution, but is compli-
cated from computational point of view. Due to this fact if situation description con-
tains considerable number of object and relations, it is proposed to use suboptimal
methods for graph comparison [10, 11]. According to these methods graph is decom-
posed into a set of sub graphs. Each sub graph contains one vertex and edges that are
related to the vertex. The task of comparing two graphs is substituted by the task of
comparing sets of sub graphs.
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 143
The alternative approach for suboptimal graph comparing is based on using Hun-
garian method [12, 13]. It assumes searching optimal matching of vertexes and their
local structure using approximation of graph Edit Distance.
In case if a priori knowledge about objects and their relations for different types
of situations is available, complexity of comparing graphs methods can be significant-
ly reduced.
8 Algorithm for revealing situations using FCA
The approach for situations assessment based on building and comparing graphs
supposes that a data base of situations is created a priori. The task of creation of a
universal mechanism for distinguishable situations retrieval is highly complicated as
situations are often rather similar; they have a number of equal characteristics, rela-
tions and involved objects. Since there are many situations and each situation is de-
scribed by huge volume of heterogeneous data it is proposed to use Formal Concept
Analysis methods [2] for revealing equal and different features of situations, inter-
connected situations, and groups of similar situations.
To build lattices formal context K is defined using a set of defined situations and
their characteristics. Characteristics can be binary, quantitative or qualitative. Binary
characteristics can be used directly for building a context. Qualitative characteristics
can be considered as a set of adjusted characteristics, where each of characteristics
values correspond to one adjusted characteristic. For representation of quantitative
characteristics in binary form nominal scales can be used. This approach is rather
flexible as it allows user to modify scales manually. It is also possible to build lattices
using multivalued contexts that are defined as K (G, M , W , I ) , where W is a set
of situations characteristics values, I is a ternary relation, I G M W I ,
where process of scaling is automated. Approaches for building lattices using multi-
valued contexts are described in [14, 15].
The algorithm for revealing situations using FCA supposes executing of three
main stages. The first stage assumes building formal context for representation situa-
tions and their characteristics. As objects of formal context a preliminary list of situa-
tions defined by experts is used. A list of context features contains set of three charac-
teristics for each involved subject domain object. A set of used characteristics is equal
to the set that is used for building graphs. Each object is characterized by i) its name
or id, ii) its location in space and, if necessary, in time and iii) aggregated indicators.
All characteristics are represented in binary form. For building nominal scale for ag-
gregated indicators, ranges for values are defined using entropy based methods, in
particular, Gini [16] evaluation measure. At the second stage FCA methods are ap-
plied to build concept lattice [17]. At the third stage formal concepts are analyzed by
experts that modify the preliminary list of situations and, in separate cases, the list of
features using obtained results. The algorithm for revealing situation using FCA is
given in Fig. 7.
144 Situation Assessment in IGIS
____________________________________________________________________
Input data. E {Oi }i 1 isa set of objects, F { f i }Yi1 is a set of object characteristics, where Y
N
is a total number of object characteristics.
Output data. S {si }iK1 is a set of situations, where K is a number of revealed situations.
Algorithm description
Step 1 define preliminary list of situations S {si }iK1
Step 2 calculate characteristics of situation
for each situation si S
for each object e j E involved in si
calculate object characteristics Fij
convert characteristics to binary form Fij FijB
Step 3 build formal context K
define formal objects G S
define formal objects features M {E, F B }
define relations I
Step 4 build lattice
Step 5 improve set of situations S
____________________________________________________________________
Fig.7 Algorithm for revealing situations using FCA
9 Case study
The proposed approach for situation assessment was used for solving task of
providing operational information about ocean temperature and salinity parameters
for hydroacoustics calculations that use sound speed of water area as one of parame-
ters. Regular grids of parameters values are usually used as a source for information
about water area state. Performing processing and analysis of available oceanographic
data in order to build regular data grids includes two main steps: data verification and
data regularization. The main purpose of data verification step is systematic storage,
analysis and processing of data in order to prepare it for solving problem of building
data grids [18, 19]. The main objective of regularization stage is to build a regular
grid using methods of objective analyses and estimate the accuracy of gridded data
[20]. Regular grids are usually updated and provided to end-users twice a year. It is
possible to organize grid recalculation each time new measurements are acquired in
systems that include components for oceanographic data processing. Algorithms for
grids recalculation assumes that the whole grid is processed. The recalculation takes
much time, besides new data is processed equally to historical data, though it is much
more important for estimation of actual water area parameters.
The experiments on operational estimation of water area parameters were made
using measurements received from Argo float drifts [21]. The objective of Argo pro-
gram is to operate and manage a set of floats distributed in all oceans. An Argo float
drifts for a number of years in the ocean. It continuously performs measurement cy-
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 145
cles. Each cycle lasts about 10 days and can be divided into 4 phases: a descent from
surface to a defined pressure (e.g., 1500 decibars), a subsurface drift (e.g., 10 days),
an ascending profile with measurements (e.g., pressure, temperature, salinity), a sur-
face drift with data transmission to a communication satellite.
An example of Argo float trajectory, temperature and salinity profiles are given
in Fig.8.
a) trajectory b) temperature profile c) salinity profile
Fig.8 An example of an Argo float trajectory and profiles with measurements
For operational estimation of ocean parameters each Argo buoy was considered
as a system that was characterized by trajectory and a set of profiles with measure-
ments. Each point where data transmission was fulfilled was defined as objects. For
neighboring objects according to the trajectory relations were set. List of possible
relations contained two types of relations: ‘measured before’, ‘measured after’. Each
object was characterized by a vector of characteristics listed in table 1 and by a vector
of measured parameters. The parameters were described in the form presented in table
2.
Table 1 Objects characteristics
Name Definition Comment
PLATFORM_ char PLATFORM_NUMBER(N_PROF, WMO float identifier. WMO is the
NUMBER STRING8); World Meteorological Organiza-
PLATFORM_NUMBER:long_name = "Float tion. This platform number is
unique identifier"; unique. Example : 6900045
PLATFORM_NUMBER:conventions = "WMO
float identifier : A9IIIII";
PLATFORM_NUMBER:_FillValue = " ";
JULD double JULD(N_PROF); Julian day of the profile1. The
JULD:long_name = "Julian day (UTC) of the integer part represents the day, the
station relative to REFERENCE_DATE_TIME"; decimal part represents the time of
JULD:units = "days since 1950-01-01 00:00:00 the profile. Date and time are in
UTC"; universal time coordinates.
JULD:conventions = "Relative julian days with Example : 18833.8013889885 :
decimal part (as parts of day)"; July 25 2001 19:14:00
JULD:_FillValue = 999999.;
LATITUDE double LATITUDE(N_PROF); Latitude of the profile. Unit :
LATITUDE:long_name = "Latitude of the sta- degree north.
tion, best estimate"; Example : 44.4991 : 44° 29’
LATITUDE:units = "degree_north"; 56.76’’ N
LATITUDE:_FillValue = 99999.;
LATITUDE:valid_min = -90.;
146 Situation Assessment in IGIS
LATITUDE:valid_max = 90.;
LONGITUDE double LONGITUDE(N_PROF); Longitude of the profile. Unit :
LONGITUDE:long_name = "Longitude of the degree east.
station, best estimate"; Example : 16.7222 : 16° 43’
LONGITUDE:units = "degree_east"; 19.92’’ E
LONGITUDE:_FillValue = 99999.;
LONGITUDE:valid_min = -180.;
LONGITUDE:valid_max = 180.;
Table 2 The description of parameters measurements
Name Definition Comment
float (N_PROF, N_LEVELS); contains the original
:long_name = ""; values of a parameter
:_FillValue = ; format of values representa-
:units = ""; tion
:valid_min = ;
:valid_max = ;
:comment = "";
:resolution = ;
To provide end-users with actual information based on results of new measure-
ments, regular grids were rebuilt for the region where new data was received. Identifi-
cation of ocean regions borders can be made manually by experts of subject domain
or using algorithms of cluster analyzes. Algorithms for building gridded data were
extended by a preliminary step that assumed assessment of observable situation.
Buoys with similar or partly similar trajectories that have close measurements values
were found using algorithms for building and comparing situation graphs. Depending
on distances between the analyzed and similar situations weight coefficients were
assigned to measurements. The highest values were assigned to newly received meas-
urements. When rebuilding grid weight of measurements are considered. It allows
calculating ocean parameters estimations based on new data and take into account
tendencies that were observed in similar situations. As not all grid is rebuild, but only
region of interest, processing is executed enough fast to meet users requirements.
Examples of results of ocean data processing using proposed approach are given
in Figure 9.
a) Temperature b) Salinity
Fig. 9.Measuring facilities and ocean parameters regular grids
The evaluation of the results was carried out by comparing measurements from a
test set that contained 5000 temperature and salinity values for various depths meas-
Andrey Pankin, Alexander Vodyaho, Nataly Zhukova 147
ured by instruments and calculated values for the same parameters at the points with
the same coordinates. The result of the comparison showed that the accuracy of calcu-
lated parameters values has increased up to 5% in some regions and in average in
about 2-3%.
10 Conclusion
The application of the proposed method for situation assessment allows to take
into account results of objects parameters measurements received from different
sources. Recognition of situations and revealing similar situations provides possibility
to obtain additional information about observed situation including tendencies and
dynamics of its development. The approach to describe and compare situations using
graphs provides high speed of calculations. Thus, we can say that the presented meth-
od can solve all problems considered in the paper.
Our future research is connected with developing algorithms that will allow using
information about dependencies between parameters and their mutual influence.
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