Spatial-Temporal Fuel-Prize Visualization in the Web
Gas-stations position their prizes often depending on other gas-stations nearby. In the event of one gas-station lowering its prizes, others in the vicinity will most likely do so as well. This behavior results in spatial propagation of prize-waves. The same effect often takes place multiple times a day.
If a gas-company wants to analyze these prize-building-mechanisms for a large spatial region graphically, some challenges occur. Especially, values cannot be aggregated spatially since the key information – two-way influencing of adjacent fuel-stations – would be lost. This is further complicated by potentially small distances between gas-stations and their varying spatial density.
The images to the left show how an adapted visualization by our software can overcome these problems. There, points within shapes mark locations of gas-stations and colors represent their prices. If a temporal animation is applied, shapes are kept and their colors change. In this example, correlations in prize-development of all German gas-stations (about 15.000) can be analyzed in detail.
