Sequence Alignment as a Method for Human Activity Analysis in Space and Time

Abstract This article introduces the method of sequence alignment as a tool for analyzing the sequential aspects within the temporal and spatial dimensions of human activities. Sequence alignment was first developed during the 1980s and employed by biochemists to analyze DNA sequences. Toward the end of the 1990s it was adapted for use in the social sciences. However, unlike other social sciences practitioners, geographers have not, until now, exploited this method. In contrast to traditional quantitative methods, sequence alignment, as its name suggests, is directly concerned with the order (sequence) of events, and is therefore well suited for the pursuit of time-geographic research. To demonstrate the merits of sequence alignment for geographic research, a database composed of forty space-time sequences of visitors who had visited the Old City of Akko (Israel) was used. The sequences were obtained by means of GPS devices, which were distributed among the visitors tracked and which they operated for the duration of their visit to the city. The sequences thereby obtained were aligned using ClustalG, a sequence alignment computer program. The result of this analysis was the identification of three temporal-spatial time geographies of the visitors that were sampled in this study.