Visual Analysis of Spatio-Temporal Event Predictions: Investigating the Spread Dynamics of Invasive Species

Invasive species are a major cause of ecological damage and commercial losses. A current problem spreading in North America and Europe is the vinegar fly Drosophila suzukii. Unlike other Drosophila, it infests non-rotting and healthy fruits and is therefore of concern to fruitgrowers, such as vintners. Consequently, large amounts of data about infestations have been collected in recent years. However, there is a lack of interactive methods to investigate this data. We employ ensemble-based classification to predict areas susceptible to infestation by D.suzukii and bring them into a spatio-temporal context using maps and glyph-based visualizations. Following the information-seeking mantra, we provide a visual analysis system Drosophigatorfor spatio-temporal event prediction, enabling the investigation of the spread dynamics of invasive species. We demonstrate the usefulness of this approach in two use cases.