Published on Mar 21, 2010

Traffic in Lisbon and the visualization of trajectories

Several experiments that map 1534 vehicles, during October 2009 in Lisbon, leaving route trails, condensed in one single day.

Traffic clots

Perhaps the strongest visual metaphor — an organism with circulatory problems. When the traffic is slow, red clots appear.

Black and white aesthetics

The following artifact is an aesthetic exploration that brings visual emphasis on the main traffic routes. Only black and white is used. Graphite on paper. Dark arteries have more traffic.

Emphasis on sluggish areas

In the next artifact the color of the arteries change with the speed of the vehicles. Rapid transit arteries are drawn with greenish and cooler colors, while the sluggish ones are reddish and hotter. Traffic intensity is mapped in the thickness and brightness of the arteries. When a certain vehicle path has a very low velocity, its covered area is drawn in order to bring emphasis on problematic areas. The white dots represent the vehicles themselves.

These visualization were developed in the context of the CityMotion project/MIT Portugal.

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