The Prototype Application TUPF

Some of the developed methods require large amounts of calculations to be performed, thus a prototype application was programmed. It was crucial to have a high computational performance, so the following technical environment was used:

For portability and reasons of distribution the choice of higher level languages such as Java or Avenue were considered, but because it was necessary to achieve maximum performance the above listed environment was chosen. The hardware chosen was determined by the availability at the institute and the need for integration with a GIS (Arc/Info), which was only available on the Sun Sparc platform.

In the following I will explain the basic elements of the user interface, followed by several examples showing the capabilities of the prototype application TUPF. As it is difficult to describe dynamic methods on a static printed paper, the CD-Version of this work additionally includes several animations of the application.

The application consists of a main window and several auxiliary windows. The main window itself contains four elements (figure A.1):

**Figure A.1:** The prototype application TUPF: the elements of the main window. A: menu bar, B: map window, C: selection bars to determine the standard temporal data frame to be displayed in the map window, D: visualisation and statistical tools.
$\includegraphics[scale=0.6]{images/tupf_main2.eps}$

As can be seen in figure A.1 a special test was rewritten and integrated into the application for a powerful comparison of two or more point distributions. It is Biondini's Multi Response Permutation Procedure which tests whether the groups originate from the same or a different distribution by exchanging observations between the groups (Biondini et al., 1988).

In figures A.2 and A.3 examples are shown for the basic selection of data. They can be refined by applying several other temporal data frames. Four sets of cyclic aspects were implemented in the prototype:

**Figure A.2:** The prototype application TUPF: With the scalebar indicated with the green arrow the time point of the temporal data frame can be defined and changed. The blue arrow points to the place where the actual time point (middle point of the TDF) is indicated.
Animation: AVI or QuickTime Movie or animated GIF.
$\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{images/tupf_bar1.eps}$

**Figure A.3:** The prototype application TUPF: With the scalebar indicated with the green arrow the width of the temporal data frame can be defined and changed. The blue arrow points to the place where the data frame width (in days, hours, minutes and seconds) is indicated.
Animation: AVI or QuickTime Movie or animated GIF.
$\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{images/tupf_bar2.eps}$

**Figure A.4:** The prototype application TUPF: with the auxiliary window on the left special selections of the data can be performed. The example here uses the amount of moon illumination as a selection criteria. First, the mechanism needs to be activated by pushing the button pointed to by the green arrow. Then the width of the data frame (lower blue arrow) and the actual time point (percent illumination) can be defined and changed. The window is live linked to the map window shown on the right side.
Animation: AVI or QuickTime Movie or animated GIF.
$\includegraphics[scale=0.8]{images/tupf_spec_sel.eps}$

As the main map window is used for georeferenced data representation, an auxiliary window is used for the calculation of the various types of plots from the Time Plot Family. TT-Plots and TT2-Plots can be easily explained in a static illustration. One of the Time Plots that can only be understood when seeing a dynamic example is the T-r plot. Such a plot is therefor illustrated in figure A.5.

**Figure A.5:** The prototype application TUPF: The T-r plot is illustrated. To activate the T-r plot the appropriate button must be selected in the window on the right (green arrow). After that, the angle from which the T-r plot is calculated can be defined and changed by moving the scalebar pointed to by the blue scalebar. In the window on the right side the T-r plot is shown and updated immediately. The little arrow pointed to by the blue arrow on the right indicates graphically the rotation angle.
Animation: AVI or QuickTime Movie or animated GIF.
$\textstyle \parbox{13cm}{{\bf {Ambiguous time}} \\ [0.2cm] \begin{tabular}{p{0.... ... seconds, it is ambiguous as to the day, month, and year.}\\ \end{tabular} \\ }$