HaniMob 2021 Workshop Report: The 1st ACM SIGSPATIAL Workshop on Animal Movement Ecology and Human Mobility

Abstract

Movement ecology is a relatively new discipline in the field of ecology that studies the spatio-temporal patterns and processes at the basis of animal movement [8]. Ecologists track animal movement using telemetry tools (such as for example bio-logging GPS tags), and then combine resulting trajectories with contextual data on environment, such as those collected through remote sensing. Combined data are then used to build statistical models that describe the determinants of animal movement, such as environmental constraints (e.g. snow layer, habitat fragmentation, human disturbance) or the inner status of individuals (e.g. memory, orientation capacity). Movement is also the focus of a different field of research, i.e. human mobility, which is studied in a set of disciplines, from GIScience, to computer science, physics, geography and transportation science [4]. In analogy with movement ecology, human mobility benefited from the recent development of sensors capable of capturing human movement in real time and at detailed spatial and temporal scales (e.g. GPS trackers).