Trajectory analysis at intersections for traffic rule identification

In this paper,we focus on trajectories at intersections regulated by various regulation types such as traffic lights,priority/yield signs,and right-of-way rules.We test some methods to detect and recognize movement patterns from GPS trajectories,in terms of their geometrical and spatio-temporal components.In particular,we first find out the main paths that vehicles follow at such locations.We then investigate the way that vehicles follow these geometric paths(how do they move along them).For these scopes,machine learning methods are used and the performance of some known methods for trajectory similarity measurement(DTW,Hausdorff,and Fréchet distance)and clustering(Affinity propagation and Agglomerative clustering)are compared based on clustering accuracy.Afterward,the movement behavior observed at six different intersections is analyzed by identifying certain movement patterns in the speed-and time-profiles of trajectories.We show that depending on the regulation type,different movement patterns are observed at intersections.This finding can be useful for intersection categorization according to traffic regulations.The practicality of automatically identifying traffic rules from GPS tracks is the enrichment of modern maps with additional navigation-related information(traffic signs,traffic lights,etc.).     

Polygonal Clustering Analysis Using Multilevel Graph‐Partition

Existing methods of spatial data clustering have focused on point data, whose similarity can be easily defined. Due to the complex shapes and alignments of polygons, the similarity between non‐overlapping polygons is important to cluster polygons. This study attempts to present an efficient method to discover clustering patterns of polygons by incorporating spatial cognition principles and multilevel graph partition. Based on spatial cognition on spatial similarity of polygons, four new similarity criteria (i.e. the distance, connectivity, size and shape) are developed to measure the similarity between polygons, and used to visually distinguish those polygons belonging to the same clusters from those to different clusters. The clustering method with multilevel graph‐partition first coarsens the graph of polygons at multiple levels, using the four defined similarities to find clusters with maximum similarity among polygons in the same clusters, then refines the obtained clusters by keeping minimum similarity between different clusters. The presented method is a general algorithm for discovering clustering patterns of polygons and can satisfy various demands by changing the weights of distance, connectivity, size and shape in spatial similarity. The presented method is tested by clustering residential areas and buildings, and the results demonstrate its usefulness and universality.     

基于多重运动特征的轨迹相似性度量模型

针对目前只能对单一运动特征（速度、方向等）进行轨迹相似性分析的不足,提出了基于多重运动特征的轨迹相似性度量,该度量对于分析和理解移动对象的运动行为和规律具有重要意义。将其应用于基于多重运动特征的运动序列模式发现。该相似性度量借鉴数据立方体的思想,将多重运动特征时间序列进行量化和符号化表示,在多重运动特征值域空间中计算两字符间的距离作为字符间替换代价,最终以加权编辑距离作为相似性度量。将该相似性度量与谱聚类方法相结合进行运动序列模式发现。实验以飓风数据为例,通过气象文献中飓风的发生与运动规律验证了模型的有效性。     

Context-awareness in similarity measures and pattern discoveries of trajectories: a context-based dynamic time warping method

Analyzing the spatial behaviors of moving-point objects (MPOs) and discovering their movement patterns have been of great interest to the geographic information science community recently. These interests can be explored through analyzing similarities in the MPO trajectories. Because movements of objects take place in various contexts, their trajectories are also highly influenced by such contexts. Therefore, it is essential to fully understand the contexts and to realize how they can be incorporated into movement analysis. This article first proposes a taxonomy for contexts. Then, a modified version of dynamic time warping called context-based dynamic time warping (CDTW) is introduced, to contextually assess the multidimensional weighted similarities of trajectories. Ultimately, the results of similarity searches are utilized in discovering the relative movement patterns of the MPOs. To evaluate the performance and effectiveness of our proposed CDTW method, we run several experiments on real datasets that were obtained from commercial airplanes in a constrained Euclidean space, taking into account contextual information. Specifically, these experiments were conducted to explore the role of contexts and their interactions in similarity measures of trajectories. The results yielded the robustness of CDTW method in quantifying the commonalities of trajectories and discovering movement patterns with 80% accuracy. Moreover, the results revealed the importance of exploiting contextual information because it can enhance and restrict movements.     

基于空间加权距离的自适应Fuzzy C-Means算法研究

空间聚类不仅应考虑GIS对象属性特征的相似性,还应考虑对象的空间邻近性。不同属性、位置特征在聚类中起到的作用不同。采用信息熵方法计算空间距离中各属性距离、位置距离的权重,权值大小用于度量相应特征在fuzzy c-means隶属度计算时的作用大小,并引入相似性指标,当两个聚类之间的相似度高于某个合并阈值时,则对应的一对聚类进行合并,从而克服需预先设置聚类类数的问题。通过应用实例的聚类有效性分析,与普通空间距离相比,基于空间加权距离的FCM算法具有稳定性和有效性。     

Discovering Spatial Interaction Communities from Mobile Phone Data

In the age of Big Data, the widespread use of location‐awareness technologies has made it possible to collect spatio‐temporal interaction data for analyzing flow patterns in both physical space and cyberspace. This research attempts to explore and interpret patterns embedded in the network of phone‐call interaction and the network of phone‐users’ movements, by considering the geographical context of mobile phone cells. We adopt an agglomerative clustering algorithm based on a Newman‐Girvan modularity metric and propose an alternative modularity function incorporating a gravity model to discover the clustering structures of spatial‐interaction communities using a mobile phone dataset from one week in a city in China. The results verify the distance decay effect and spatial continuity that control the process of partitioning phone‐call interaction, which indicates that people tend to communicate within a spatial‐proximity community. Furthermore, we discover that a high correlation exists between phone‐users’ movements in physical space and phone‐call interaction in cyberspace. Our approach presents a combined qualitative‐quantitative framework to identify clusters and interaction patterns, and explains how geographical context influences communities of callers and receivers. The findings of this empirical study are valuable for urban structure studies as well as for the detection of communities in spatial networks.     

利用GPS轨迹二次聚类方法进行道路拥堵精细化识别

针对当前在精细识别道路拥堵时空范围方面研究的不足,提出一种利用GPS轨迹的二次聚类方法,通过快速识别大批量在时间、空间上差异较小且速度相近的轨迹段,反映出道路交通状态及时空变化趋势,并根据速度阈值确定拥堵状态及精细时空范围。首先将轨迹按采样间隔划分成若干条子轨迹,针对子轨迹段提出相似队列的概念,并设计了基于密度的空间聚类的相似队列提取方法,通过初次聚类合并相似子轨迹段,再利用改进的欧氏空间相似度度量函数计算相似队列间的时空距离,最后以相似队列为基本单元,基于模糊C均值聚类的方法进行二次聚类,根据聚类的结果进行交通流状态的识别和划分。以广州市主干路真实出租车GPS轨迹数据为例,对该方法进行验证。实验结果表明,该二次聚类方法能够较为精细地反映城市道路的拥堵时空范围,便于管理者精准疏散城市道路拥堵,相比直接聚类方法可以有效提升大批量轨迹数据的计算效率。     

Path segmentation for movement trajectories with irregular sampling frequency using space‐time interpolation and density‐based spatial clustering

Path segmentation methods have been developed to distinguish stops and moves along movement trajectories. However, most studies do not focus on handling irregular sampling frequency of the movement data. This article proposes a four‐step method to handle various time intervals between two consecutive records, including parameter setting, space‐time interpolation, density‐based spatial clustering, and integrating the geographic context. The article uses GPS tracking data provided by HOURCAR, a non‐profit car‐sharing service in Minnesota, as a case study to demonstrate our method and present the results. We also implement the DB‐SMoT algorithm as a comparison. The results show that our four‐step method can handle various time intervals between consecutive records, group consecutive stops close to each other, and distinguish different types of stops and their inferred activities. These results can provide novel insights into car‐sharing behaviors such as trip purposes and activity scheduling.     

一种基于重排检验的时空聚类方法

融合时空邻近与专题属性相似的时空聚类是挖掘地理现象时空演化规律的重要手段。现有方法需要的聚类参数许多难以获取,影响了聚类方法的可操作性与聚类结果的可靠性。提出一种基于重排检验的时空聚类方法。首先,通过重排检验发现时空数据集中的均质子区域;进而,采用均方误差准则合并均质子区域内的时空实体生成时空簇,并通过簇内重排检验自动识别聚类合并的终止条件;最后,借助时空拓扑关系在保证结果精度的前提下发展一种快速重排检验的方法,提高了聚类方法的运行效率。通过实验和比较发现,该方法一方面可以发现不同形状、大小的时空簇,聚类质量优于经典的ST-DBSCAN方法;另一方面聚类过程中人为设置参数的主观性显著降低,提高了聚类方法的可操作性。     

Addressing location uncertainties in GPS‐based activity monitoring: A methodological framework

Location uncertainty has been a major barrier in information mining from location data. Although the development of electronic and telecommunication equipment has led to an increased amount and refined resolution of data about individuals’ spatio‐temporal trajectories, the potential of such data, especially in the context of environmental health studies, has not been fully realized due to the lack of methodology that addresses location uncertainties. This article describes a methodological framework for deriving information about people's continuous activities from individual‐collected Global Positioning System (GPS) data, which is vital for a variety of environmental health studies. This framework is composed of two major methods that address critical issues at different stages of GPS data processing: (1) a fuzzy classification method for distinguishing activity patterns; and (2) a scale‐adaptive method for refining activity locations and outdoor/indoor environments. Evaluation of this framework based on smartphone‐collected GPS data indicates that it is robust to location errors and is able to generate useful information about individuals’ life trajectories.     

Detecting vehicle traffic patterns in urban environments using taxi trajectory intersection points

Abstract

Detecting and describing movement of vehicles in established transportation infrastructures is an important task. It helps to predict periodical traffic patterns for optimizing traffic regulations and extending the functions of established transportation infrastructures. The detection of traffic patterns consists not only of analyses of arrangement patterns of multiple vehicle trajectories, but also of the inspection of the embedded geographical context. In this paper, we introduce a method for intersecting vehicle trajectories and extracting their intersection points for selected rush hours in urban environments. Those vehicle trajectory intersection points (TIP) are frequently visited locations within urban road networks and are subsequently formed into density-connected clusters, which are then represented as polygons. For representing temporal variations of the created polygons, we enrich these with vehicle trajectories of other times of the day and additional road network information. In a case study, we test our approach on massive taxi Floating Car Data (FCD) from Shanghai and road network data from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project. The first test results show strong correlations with periodical traffic events in Shanghai. Based on these results, we reason out the usefulness of polygons representing frequently visited locations for analyses in urban planning and traffic engineering.     

Convective Cloud Detection and Tracking from Series of Infrared Images

The most significant part of prediction of precipitation is the detection and identification of convective (cumulonimbus) clouds, also the tracking of cloud movement is important for identification of location of precipitation. A very simple methodology for detecting convective clouds and then tracking its movement from a series of infrared (IR) images is proposed in this paper. IR image is segmented using k-means clustering algorithm, which has been implemented using Euclidean, Manhattan and Mahalanobis distances and the results have been compared. Cloud clusters have been identified from segmented image and subsequently the large clusters were extracted. Center of Mass (CoM) was calculated for each selected cloud cluster and its position after every 30 min was predicted and compared with the actual values. If the predicted position deviates, the proposed models automatically adjusts itself, and the next prediction becomes closer to original values of position.     

A time‐geographic approach to quantifying wildlife–road interactions

Recent advances in time geography offer new perspectives for studying animal movements and interactions in an environmental context. In particular, the ability to estimate an animal's spatial location probabilistically at temporal sampling intervals between known fix locations allows researchers to quantify how individuals interact with one another and their environment on finer temporal and spatial scales than previously explored. This article extends methods from time geography, specifically probabilistic space–time prisms, to quantify and summarize animal–road interactions toward understanding related diurnal movement behaviors, including road avoidance. The approach is demonstrated using tracking data for fishers (Martes pennanti) in New York State, where the total probability of interaction with roadways is calculated for individuals over the duration tracked. Additionally, a summarization method visualizing daily interaction probabilities at 60 s intervals is developed to assist in the examination of temporal patterns associated with fishers’ movement behavior with respect to roadways. The results identify spatial and temporal patterns of fisher–roadway interaction by time of day. Overall, the methodologies discussed offer an intuitive means to assess moving object location probabilities in the context of environmental factors. Implications for movement ecology and related conservation planning efforts are also discussed.     

Discovering Spatial Patterns in Origin‐Destination Mobility Data

Mobility and spatial interaction data have become increasingly available due to the wide adoption of location‐aware technologies. Examples of mobility data include human daily activities, vehicle trajectories, and animal movements, among others. In this article we focus on a special type of mobility data, i.e. origin‐destination pairs, and present a new approach to the discovery and understanding of spatio‐temporal patterns in the movements. Specifically, to extract information from complex connections among a large number of point locations, the approach involves two steps: (1) spatial clustering of massive GPS points to recognize potentially meaningful places; and (2) extraction and mapping of the flow measures of clusters to understand the spatial distribution and temporal trends of movements. We present a case study with a large dataset of taxi trajectories in Shenzhen, China to demonstrate and evaluate the methodology. The contribution of the research is two‐fold. First, it presents a new methodology for detecting location patterns and spatial structures embedded in origin‐destination movements. Second, the approach is scalable to large data sets and can summarize massive data to facilitate pattern extraction and understanding.     

An adaptive dual clustering algorithm based on hierarchical structure: A case study of settlement zoning

Traditional dual clustering algorithms cannot adaptively perform clustering well without sufficient prior knowledge of the dataset. This article aims at accommodating both spatial and non‐spatial attributes in detecting clusters without the need to set parameters by default or prior knowledge. A novel adaptive dual clustering algorithm (ADC+) is proposed to obtain satisfactory clustering results considering the spatial proximity and attribute similarity with the presence of noise and barriers. In this algorithm, Delaunay triangulation is utilized to adaptively obtain spatial proximity and spatial homogenous patterns based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). Then, a hierarchical clustering method is employed to obtain clusters with similar attributes. The hierarchical clustering method adopts a discriminating coefficient to adaptively control the depth of the hierarchical architecture. The clustering results are further refined using an optimization approach. The advantages and practicability of the ADC+ algorithm are illustrated by experiments on both simulated datasets and real‐world applications. It is found that the proposed ADC+ algorithm can adaptively and accurately detect clusters with arbitrary shapes, similar attributes and densities under the consideration of barriers.     

顾及功能语义特征的建筑物空间分布模式识别方法

本文从空间-语义双重约束角度,提出一种顾及空间邻近和功能语义相似的建筑物空间分布模式识别方法。首先,基于建筑物的空间位置邻近性(即建筑物间的最小距离)约束进行聚类,获得建筑物的空间分布模式和建筑物间的空间邻近关系;然后,根据建筑物的功能语义相似性约束进行分割,获得建筑物的初步聚类结果;最后,考虑簇内相似性与簇间差异性进行整体优化,获得最终聚类结果。试验验证表明,本文方法比现有方法能够更有效地识别空间邻近与功能语义一致的建筑物群,服务于智慧城市建设中对建筑物进行语义层次综合和对城市结构进行深入研究的需求。     

Mapping Large Spatial Flow Data with Hierarchical Clustering

It is challenging to map large spatial flow data due to the problem of occlusion and cluttered display, where hundreds of thousands of flows overlap and intersect each other. Existing flow mapping approaches often aggregate flows using predetermined high‐level geographic units (e.g. states) or bundling partial flow lines that are close in space, both of which cause a significant loss or distortion of information and may miss major patterns. In this research, we developed a flow clustering method that extracts clusters of similar flows to avoid the cluttering problem, reveal abstracted flow patterns, and meanwhile preserves data resolution as much as possible. Specifically, our method extends the traditional hierarchical clustering method to aggregate and map large flow data. The new method considers both origins and destinations in determining the similarity of two flows, which ensures that a flow cluster represents flows from similar origins to similar destinations and thus minimizes information loss during aggregation. With the spatial index and search algorithm, the new method is scalable to large flow data sets. As a hierarchical method, it generalizes flows to different hierarchical levels and has the potential to support multi‐resolution flow mapping. Different distance definitions can be incorporated to adapt to uneven spatial distribution of flows and detect flow clusters of different densities. To assess the quality and fidelity of flow clusters and flow maps, we carry out a case study to analyze a data set of 243,850 taxi trips within an urban area.     

一种基于双重距离的空间聚类方法

传统聚类方法大都是基于空间位置或非空间属性的相似性来进行聚类,分裂了空间要素固有的二重特性,从而导致了许多实际应用中空间聚类结果难以同时满足空间位置毗邻和非空间属性相近。然而,兼顾两者特性的空间聚类方法又存在算法复杂、结果不确定以及不易扩展等问题。为此,本文通过引入直接可达和相连概念,提出了一种基于双重距离的空间聚类方法,并给出了基于双重距离空间聚类的算法,分析了算法的复杂度。通过实验进一步验证了基于双重距离空间聚类算法不仅能发现任意形状的类簇,而且具有很好的抗噪性。     

Trajectories of Moving Objects on a Network: Detection of Similarities,Visualization of Relations,and Classification of Trajectories

Development in techniques of spatial data acquisition enables us to easily record the trajectories of moving objects. Movement of human beings, animals, and birds can be captured by GPS loggers. The obtained data are analyzed by visualization, clustering, and classification to detect patterns frequently or rarely found in trajectories. To extract a wider variety of patterns in analysis, this article proposes a new method for analyzing trajectories on a network space. The method first extracts primary routes as subparts of trajectories. The topological relations among primary routes and trajectories are visualized as both a map and a graph‐based diagram. They permit us to understand the spatial and topological relations among the primary routes and trajectories at both global and local scales. The graph‐based diagram also permits us to classify trajectories. The representativeness of primary routes is evaluated by two numerical measures. The method is applied to the analysis of daily travel behavior of one of the authors. Technical soundness of the method is discussed as well as empirical findings.     

A Chain-Code-Based Map Matching Algorithm for Wheelchair Navigation

Accurate vehicle tracking is essential for navigation systems to function correctly. Unfortunately, GPS data is still plagued with errors that frequently produce inaccurate trajectories. Research in map matching algorithms focuses on how to efficiently match GPS tracking data to the underlying road network. This article presents an innovative map matching algorithm that considers the trajectory of the data rather than merely the current position as in the typical map matching case. Instead of computing the precise angle which is traditionally used, a discrete eight-direction chain code, to represent a trend of movement, is used. Coupled with distance information, map matching decisions are made by comparing the differences between trajectories representing the road segments and GPS tracking data chain-codes. Moreover, to contrast the performance of the chain-code algorithm, two evaluation strategies, linear and non-linear, are analyzed. The presented chain-code map matching algorithm was evaluated for wheelchair navigation using university campus sidewalk data. The evaluation results indicate that the algorithm is efficient in terms of accuracy and computational time.