Trajectory clustering by means of Earth Mover's Distance

We propose a method for trajectory classification based on a general cluster-based methodology, that can be used both off-line in an unsupervised fashion, both on-line, classifying new trajectories or part of them. We use the Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) and we adapt it in order to employ it as a tool for trajectory clustering. We propose a novel effective method to identify the clusters’ representatives by means of the p—median location problem. This methodology is able to manage different length and noisy trajectories and takes velocity profiles and stops into account. We discuss the experimental results and we compare our approach with other trajectory clustering methods.