2016 International Symposium on Computer, Consumer and Control
Fuzzy C-means with Spatiotemporal Constraints
Xu Gao, Fusheng Yu
School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University,
Laboratory of Mathematics and Complex Systems, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100875, China
yufusheng@bnu.edu.cn
Abstract— Cluster analysis is a method of dividing the data into
meaningful clusters based on the similarity of the data, making it
possible to observe the data on a higher-level. Spatiotemporal
data mining is a hot research topic in recent years. Currently, the
research of spatiotemporal clustering analysis is still at a
preliminary stage. Different from the existing methods for
clustering spatiotemporal data, in this article we propose a novel
fuzzy clustering method, fuzzy c-means with spatiotemporal
constraints, which has both spatial and temporal constraints,
considering closeness degree in both space and time. Using the
Lagrange multiplier method, the iterative formulas of cluster
centers and partition matrix are derived. The proposed method
is verified using both artificially generated data and real data.
Experimental results show that the algorithm can effectively
treat trajectory data. For spatiotemporal data with transition
points or mixed, the algorithm also has good applicability.
Keywords—spatiotemporal data, fuzzy clustering, trajectory,
fuzzy c-means, spatiotemporal constraints.
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, with the development of information
technology, we’ve come to an era of big data and spatiote-
mporal data is increasing explosively. Temporal and spatial
properties are key issues while analysing data from business,
management, scientific research and so on. Therefore, deve-
loping an approach for analysing spatiotemporal data is
meaningful.
Cluster analysis is a method of dividing the data into
meaningful clusters based on the similarity of the data,
making it possible to observe the data on a higher-level. Clus-
tering spatiotemporal data has become a focus because it can
reveal the essential features and developing trend of the data.
And it has important application value in the analysis of
global climate change [1], public health security [2], seismic
by defining space-time coupled distance. But it is difficult to
fuse spatial and temporal properties. Fuzzy c-means(FCM) is
a classic method of data clustering[10], based on which
Pedrycz proposed a fuzzy clustering method with spatial
constraint[11], and he also proposed a fuzzy clustering
method for spatiotemporal data with separatable spatial and
temporal components[12]. Yujie Li and Huimin Lu proposed
a robust color image segmentation method based on weighting
fuzzy C-means clustering, introducing a method for deter-
mining the number of clusters for image segmentation, but the
dataset doesn’t have temporal properties[13,14]. In this paper,
we have proposed a FCM with spatiotemporal constraints
method, which is applicable for all kinds of data with
spatiotemporal information, and experimental results show its
feasibility in dealing with trajectory data, providing an
approach for granulation of trajectories.
The structure of this paper is as follows: Section ൖ presents
the preliminary of this paper, Section ൗ illustrates the type of
data to be processed, proposes the objective function of FCM
with spatiotemporal constraints, derives the formula for
iterative algorithm using the Lagrange multiplier method, and
introduces the algorithm of the FCM with spatiotemporal
constraints. The experimental results are shown in Section൘.
And Section ൙ is for the conclusions.
II. PRELIMINARY
In this section, the standard FCM algorithm is briefly
introduced.
Given a dataset X = {x1 , x2 ," , xn } , a fuzzy matrix
A = (aij )c×n is called a partition matrix of X if A satisfies:
F
monitoring [3,4] and so on. But there is not a universal ¦ DLM = M = " Q 
approach for spatiotemporal data clustering at present. L =
The existing methods of spatiotemporal data clustering Q
includes: space-time permutation statistics method [5], density
based method[3,4,6], and spatiotemporal distance based
 < ¦ DLM
M=
< Q L = " F 
method[7,8,9]. The idea of space-time permutation statistics A partition matrix denotes a fuzzy partition of X which is
method is adopting a permutation window, which is usually a
clustered into c clusters. In the partition matrix, aij denotes
cylinder with the spatial distance as radius and temporal
distance as height, and scanning around every data point with the membership degree of x j to the i th cluster. The cluster
the help of statistical identifying method. This approach needs
assumption of the probability distribution of data, and the center of the i th cluster is denoted as:
result is influenced by the window chosen. The idea of density viˈV = (v1 , v2 ," , vc ) .
based method is extending the classical DBSCAN by adding a
time dimension. The spatiotemporal distance based method is

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337
DOI 10.1109/IS3C.2016.94
 temporal neighbourhood function, and ϕ (Pk , Pl ) is the spatial
c n
Let J ( A, V ) = ¦¦ a
2
2
ij x j − vi , then the optimal partition
i =1 j =1 neighbourhood function. Here we choose Gaussian kernel and
and cluster centers can be obtained by minimizing J ( A, V ) Uniform kernel as our neighbourhood function, so ψ (k, l ) and
using the following formulas: ϕ (Pk , Pl ) are as follows:
n

¦(a )
2
xj −1
­1, k − l ≤ ε
ij
ª c º ψ (k , l ) = ®
( )
2
vi =
j =1
n
, aij = « ¦ x j − vi x j − vl » ¯0, elsewhere ˄2˅

¦(a ) ¬ l =1 ¼
2
d
­ 1 2½
j =1
ij
ϕ (Pk , Pl ) = (2π )- 2 exp®− Pk − Pl ¾ ˄3˅
¯ 2 ¿
III. FCM WITH SPATIOTEMPORAL CONSTRAINTS Where d denotes the dimension of the spatial
In this section, the novel method: FCM with spatiotemporal information.
constraints is introduced. The type of data to be processed is The first item of the objective function is the total
illustrated in subsection A, and the objective function for our distance of feature {x } N
j j =1 to cluster centers. The second item
method is proposed in subsection B. Next, the iterative
formulas are derived in subsection C. Finally, the iterative denotes temporal constraint. The third item denotes spatial
algorithm is introduced in subsection D. constraint. α , β , γ are the weights of these items, satisfying
α + β + γ = 1.
A. Type of data to be processed
Spatial and temporal properties are two key features of C. Calculation of partition matrix and cluster center
spatiotemporal data which distinguish it from other types of Lagrange multiplier method is applied to get the iterate
data. There are mainly five types of spatiotemporal data[13]: formulas for equation (1). For X t , suppose
ST events, Geo-referenced series, Geo-referenced time series,
moving points and trajectories. § c · c
V = λ ¨ ¦ uit − 1¸ + α ¦ uit2 d it2
In this paper, a single trajectory which is related to time and © i =1 ¹
{ }
i =1
position is processed. We assume that X j N be the dataset
j =1 ªN º
( )
c N
to be clustered where X j = Pj , x j , j = 1,2," N . Index j + β ¦ «¦ (uik − uit ) ψ ( k , l ) d ik2 + ¦ (uit − uil ) ψ ( k , l )d it2 »
2 2
«
i =1 k =1 l =1
»
denotes temporal feature, and the time interval between two «¬ k ≠t l ≠t »¼
adjacent elements is equal. Pj is the spatial part of X j , and ªN º
c N
+ γ ¦ «¦ (uik − uit ) ϕ (Pk , Pt )d ik2 + ¦ (uit − uil ) ϕ (Pt , Pl )d it2 »
2 2
x j ∈ R m denotes other features of X j , for instance, maximal « »
i =1 k =1 l =1
wind speed of a typhoon. ¬« k ≠ t l ≠t ¼»
B. Objective function ˄4˅
∂V c
Spatial and temporal properties are two important features
of spatiotemporal data, and compaction in spatial and
Let
∂u st
= 0 , and consider ¦u
i =1
ij = 1, j = 1, 2," , N ,
temporal properties within each cluster is expected.
u st can be calculated as the following formula:
Referencing the idea of supervised clustering, an improved
c c
FCM method by joining spatial and temporal constraints in
the objective function is proposed as shown below: ust = (1 + ¦ ( Bst − Bit Ait )) ¦A st Ait ˄5˅
c N c N N i =1 i =1
Q = α ¦ ¦ uij2 d ij2 + β ¦¦¦ (uik − uil ) ψ (k , l )d ik2
2
Where
N
i =1 j =1 i =1 k =1 l =1
Ast = 2αd st2 + 2¦ (βψ (k , t ) + γϕ (Pk , Pt ))d sk2
c N N
+ γ ¦¦¦ (uik − uil ) ϕ (Pk , Pl )d ik2
2 k =1
˄1˅ k ≠t

i =1 k =1 l =1 N

Where U = uij ( ) , uij ∈ [0,1], denotes the fuzzy membership + 2¦ (βψ (t , l ) + γϕ (Pt , Pl ))d st2
c× n l =1 ˄6˅
l ≠t
degree for X j to the i th cluster, satisfying
N
c Bst = 2¦ (βψ (k , t ) + γϕ (Pk , Pt ))u sk d sk2
¦u
i =1
ij = 1, j = 1,2," , N . And d ij = x j − vi , is the k =1
k ≠t
N
distance between X j and the i th cluster center, which
+ 2¦ (βψ (t , l ) + γϕ (Pt , Pl ))u sl d st2 ˄7˅
doesn’t include spatial or temporal information. ψ (k, l ) is the l =1
l ≠t

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337
 The objective function can also be written as: A. Experiment with artificial datasets

Q = α ¦¦ uij2 ¦ (x jm − vim )
c N n
2 First, a single trajectory which can be classified into three
clusters clearly is considered, as shown in Fig.1, the
i =1 j =1 m =1
connecting line between two points indicates that they are
c N N n
+ β ¦¦¦ (uik − uil ) ψ (k , l )¦ ( xkm − vim ) adjacent in time. The experiment result in Fig.2 shows that the
2 2

i =1 k =1 l =1 m =1
dataset can be divided into three clusters(black, red, green),
c N N n which is consistent with visual conclusion.
+ γ ¦¦¦ (uik − uil ) ϕ (Pk , Pl )¦ ( xkm − vim )
2 2
˄8˅
i =1 k =1 l =1 m =1
∂Q
Let = 0 , the formula of vs is as follows: 100

∂vsr 80

N N N N N
2α¦usj2 xj + 2β ¦¦(usk −usl ) ψ (k, l )xk + 2γ ¦¦(usk −usl ) ϕ(Pk , Pl )xk
2 2 60

z
j =1 k =1 l =1 k =1 l =1 40
vs = N N N N N
2α¦u + 2β ¦¦(usk −usl ) ψ (k, l ) + 2γ ¦¦(usk −usl ) ϕ(Pk , Pl )
2 2 2 20
sj
j =1 k =1 l =1 k =1 l =1 0
60

˄9˅ 40
60
80

20 40
20
When the partition matrix is initialized, the clustering y 0 0
x
method can be realized by iteration according to formulas (5)
and (9). Fig.1. Original spatiotemporal dataset.

D. Algorithm of FCM with spatiotemporal constraints

1) Implementation of the proposed algorithm. 100

Step 1: initialization. Determine cluster number c , 80

maximal iterative number M , and randomly initialize 60

partition matrix U = (uij ), i = 1,2," , c, j = 1,2," , N .

z

40

v = (v )
k c 20
Step 2: calculate cluster center s s =1 of the k th
0
time according to formula (9). 60
80
Step 3: modify partition matrix 40
60

U = (u st ), s = 1,2," , c, t = 1,2," , N . According to

k 20 40
20
y 0 0
x
formulas (5),(6),(7).
Step 4: check if k reaches the maximal iterative number Fig.2. Clustering result using the augmented FCM

M , or U k − U k −1 ≤ ε 0 , if either of these is satisfied, the Then we add some transitional points between each cluster
algorithm comes to an end, otherwise, returns to step 2. and mix the position of some points from different clusters as
shown in Fig.3, and the result is shown in Fig.4. The weights
2) De-fuzzification of clustering results are user-determined. Here we choose the weight for the
To de-fuzzy the clustering results, maximum membership temporal item as 0.4 because temporal property plays an
degree law is adopted: important part in trajectory data. We can see the algorithm
For any X j , if uij = max u kj , then X j is classified to the tends to classify two successive points as the same cluster,
1≤ k ≤ c which is reasonable. In fact, spatial property is still an
i th cluster. important aspect, because the membership degree of the
3) Computational complexity of the proposed algorithm transitional points to the two clusters are close, for example,
the membership degree vector of the three transitional points
Once M and c are fixed, the computational complexity of between the red cluster and the green cluster are
the proposed method is Ο(n
2
) , which is the same as the [0.52,0.39,0.09], [0.44,0.45,0.01], [0.35,0.55,0.10]. The result
traditional FCM algorithm. also shows that the temporal constraint can prevent
misclassification effectively as the mixed points are classified
IV. EXPERIMENT STUDIES to temporal adjacent cluster.

339
338
 V. CONCLUSIONS
100
In this paper, a fuzzy clustering method with spatio-
80
temporal constraints is proposed. And its effectiveness is
60 testified using artificial trajectory data. This approach can be
used for granulation of trajectories, which can simplify
z

40

20
calculation and help us to view the data on a higher level. And
it can be generalized to other types of spatiotemporal data if
0
60 the spatial and temporal information are given.
80
40
60
Further research can be focused on clustering of multiple
20
20
40
trajectories and how to determine the weights according to
y 0 0
x different data sets and different issues.
Fig. 3. Original spatiotemporal dataset.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (No.11571001), Beijing Natural Science
100 Foundation (No. 4112031), and the Fundamental Research
80
Funds for the Central Universities.
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B. Experiment with real data
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Fig.5.Clustering result of typhoon Halong
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