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.     

Mobile Visibility Querying for LBS

This article describes research carried out in the area of mobile spatial interaction (MSI) and the development of a 3D mobile version of a 2D web‐based directional query processor. The TellMe application integrates location (from GPS, GSM, WiFi) and orientation (from magnetometer/accelerometer) sensor technologies into an enhanced spatial query processing module capable of exploiting a mobile device's position and orientation for querying real‐world spatial datasets. This article outlines our technique for combining these technologies and the architecture needed to deploy them on a sensor enabled smartphone (i.e. Nokia Navigator 6210). With all these sensor technologies now available on off‐the‐shelf devices, it is possible to employ a mobile query system that can work effectively in any environment using location and orientation as primary parameters for directional queries. Novel approaches for determining a user's visible query space in three dimensions based on their line‐of‐sight (ego‐visibility) are investigated to provide for “hidden query removal” functionality. This article presents demonstrable results of a mobile application that is location, direction, and orientation aware, and that retrieves database objects and attributes (e.g. buildings, points‐of‐interest, etc.) by simply pointing, or “looking”, at them with a mobile phone.     

Analytical queries on semantic trajectories using graph databases

This article studies the analysis of moving object data collected by location‐aware devices, such as GPS, using graph databases. Such raw trajectories can be transformed into so‐called semantic trajectories, which are sequences of stops that occur at “places of interest.” Trajectory data analysis can be enriched if spatial and non‐spatial contextual data associated with the moving objects are taken into account, and aggregation of trajectory data can reveal hidden patterns within such data. When trajectory data are stored in relational databases, there is an “impedance mismatch” between the representation and storage models. Graphs in which the nodes and edges are annotated with properties are gaining increasing interest to model a variety of networks. Therefore, this article proposes the use of graph databases (Neo4j in this case) to represent and store trajectory data, which can thus be analyzed at different aggregation levels using graph query languages (Cypher, for Neo4j). Through a real‐world public data case study, the article shows that trajectory queries are expressed more naturally on the graph‐based representation than over the relational alternative, and perform better in many typical cases.     

Quality of hybrid location data drawn from GPS‐enabled mobile phones: Does it matter?

Despite their increasing popularity in human mobility studies, few studies have investigated the geo‐spatial quality of GPS‐enabled mobile phone data in which phone location is determined by special queries designed to collect location data with predetermined sampling intervals (hereafter “active mobile phone data”). We focus on two key issues in active mobile phone data—systematic gaps in tracking records and positioning uncertainty—and investigate their effects on human mobility pattern analyses. To address gaps in records, we develop an imputation strategy that utilizes local environment information, such as parcel boundaries, and recording time intervals. We evaluate the performance of the proposed imputation strategy by comparing raw versus imputed data with participants’ online survey responses. The results indicate that imputed data are superior to raw data in identifying individuals’ frequently visited places on a weekly basis. To assess the location accuracy of active mobile phone data, we investigate the spatial and temporal patterns of the positional uncertainty of each record and examine via Monte Carlo simulation how inaccurate location information might affect human mobility pattern indicators. Results suggest that the level of uncertainty varies as a function of time of day and the type of land use at which the position was determined, both of which are closely related to the location technology used to determine the location. Our study highlights the importance of understanding and addressing limitations of mobile phone derived positioning data prior to their use in human mobility studies.     

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.     

Calibrating the dynamic Huff model for business analysis using location big data

The Huff model has been widely used in location‐based business analysis to delineate a trade area containing a store’s potential customers. Calibrating the Huff model and its extensions requires empirical location visit data. Many studies rely on labor‐intensive surveys. With the increasing availability of mobile devices, users in location‐based platforms share rich multimedia information about their locations at a fine spatio‐temporal resolution, which offers opportunities for business intelligence. In this research, we present a time‐aware dynamic Huff model (T‐Huff) for location‐based market share analysis and calibrate this model using large‐scale store visit patterns based on mobile phone location data across the 10 most populated US cities. By comparing the hourly visit patterns of two types of stores, we demonstrate that the calibrated T‐Huff model is more accurate than the original Huff model in predicting the market share of different types of business (e.g., supermarkets versus department stores) over time. We also identify the regional variability where people in large metropolitan areas with a well‐developed transit system show less sensitivity to long‐distance visits. In addition, several socioeconomic and demographic factors (e.g., median household income) that potentially affect people’s visit decisions are examined and summarized.     

轨迹数据的时间采样间隔对停留识别和出行网络构建的影响

个体轨迹数据已经广泛用于人群活动的研究中。在静止的局部空间开展的活动是个体日常生活的基本元素,在轨迹数据中对应停留部分。因此学者常从轨迹数据中识别停留来研究个体活动信息。然而,轨迹数据的时间采样间隔会对停留识别带来影响。针对该问题,首先提出了一个框架,量化不同持续时间长度的活动在不同时间采样间隔的轨迹数据中被识别为停留的概率。其次,考虑到个体出行网络依赖于停留识别结果,基于该框架,研究分析了时间采样间隔对出行网络分析结果的影响。最后,利用该框架分别对深圳市居民出行调查数据和手机轨迹数据进行了分析。研究表明,在面向人群活动的研究和应用中,该框架能支持时间采样间隔的选择决策和面向活动类型的研究结果评价。     

Floor positioning method indoors with smartphone’s barometer

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an indoor floor positioning method with the smartphone’s barometer for the purpose of solving the problem of low availability and high environmental dependence of the traditional floor positioning technology. First, an initial floor position algorithm with the “entering” detection algorithm has been obtained. Second, the user’s going upstairs or downstairs activities are identified by the characteristics of the air pressure fluctuation. Third, the moving distance in the vertical direction and the floor change during going upstairs or downstairs are estimated to obtain the accurate floor position. In order to solve the problem of the floor misjudgment from different mobile phone’s barometers, this paper calculates the pressure data from the different cell phones, and effectively reduce the errors of the air pressure estimating the elevation which is caused by the heterogeneity of the mobile phones. The experiment results show that the average correct rate of the floor identification is more than 85% for three types of the cell phones while reducing environmental dependence and improving availability. Further, this paper compares and analyzes the three common floor location methods – the WLAN Floor Location (WFL) method based on the fingerprint, the Neural Network Floor Location (NFL) methods, and the Magnetic Floor Location (MFL) method with our method. The experiment results achieve 94.2% correct rate of the floor identification with Huawei mate10 Pro mobile phone.     

载体轨迹停留信息提取的核密度法及其可视化

轨迹停留蕴含重要语义信息,其有效提取是开展轨迹Stop/Move模型分析的前提。本文首先依据核密度思想,通过累计邻域点时空贡献来定义轨迹点的停留指数,在此基础上设计了停留指数图,以图形方式直观表达轨迹点的时空聚集程度变化。进一步针对源于停留指数的潜在停留段,提出了一种基于潜在停留段时空临近关系的逐级合并算法,以自动发现和提取停留。试验表明,该算法兼顾停留识别的完整性和准确性,可以有效识别复杂多样的轨迹停留,即使面对噪声严重的轨迹,停留提取的正确率依然较高。     

An intersection‐based trajectory‐region movement study

In order to better understand the movement of an object with respect to a region, we propose a formal model of the evolving spatial relationships that transition between local topologies with respect to a trajectory and a region as well as develop a querying mechanism to analyze movement patterns. We summarize 12 types of local topologies built on trajectory‐region intersections, and derive their transition graph; then we capture and model evolving local topologies with two types of trajectory‐region strings, a movement string and a stop‐move string. The stop‐move string encodes the stop information further during a trajectory than the movement string. Such a string‐format expression of trajectory‐region movement, although conceptually simple, carries unprecedented information for effectively interpreting how trajectories move with respect to regions. We also design the corresponding Finite State Automations for a movement string as well as a stop‐move string, which are used not only to recognize the language of trajectory‐region strings, but also to deal effectively with trajectory‐region pattern queries. When annotated with the time information of stops and intersections, a trajectory‐region movement snapshot and its evolution during a time interval can be inferred, and even the relationships among trajectories with respect to the same region can be explored.     

Mobile user identification based on road networks and multiple distance measures

Mobile user identification aims at matching different mobile devices of the same user using trajectory data, which has attracted extensive research in recent years. Most of the previous work extracted trajectory features based on regular grids, which will lead to incorrect feature representation due to lack of geographic information. Besides, most trajectory similarity models only considered one single distance measure to calculate the similarity between users, which ignore the connection between different distance measures and may lead to some false matches. In light of this, we present a novel user identification method based on road networks and multiple distance measures in this article. The proposed method segments a city map into several grids and road segments based on road networks. Then it extracts location and road information of trajectories to jointly construct user features. Multiple distance measures are fused by a discriminant model to improve the effect of user identification. Experiments on real GPS trajectory datasets show that our proposed method outperforms related similarity measure methods and is stable for mobile user identification. Meanwhile, our method can also achieve good identification results even on sparse trajectory datasets.     

Mapping collective human activity in an urban environment based on mobile phone data

Identifying and characterizing variations of human activity – specifically changes in intensity and similarity – in urban environments provide insights into the social component of those eminently complex systems. Using large volumes of user-generated mobile phone data, we derive mobile communication profiles that we use as a proxy for the collective human activity. In this article, geocomputational methods and geovisual analytics such as self-organizing maps (SOM) are used to explore the variations of these profiles, and its implications for collective human activity. We evaluate the merits of SOM as a cross-dimensional clustering technique and derived temporal trajectories of variations within the mobile communication profiles. The trajectories’ characteristics such as length are discussed, suggesting spatial variations in intensity and similarity in collective human activity. Trajectories are linked back to the geographic space to map the spatial and temporal variation of trajectory characteristics. Different trajectory lengths suggest that mobile phone activity is correlated with the spatial configuration of the city, and so at different times of the day. Our approach contributes to the understanding of the space-time social dynamics within urban environments.     

扩展卡尔曼滤波的安卓手机定位算法研究

随着手机定位的应用越来越多,目前市场中许多APP(Application)都会用到定位功能.但多数APP使用传统的定位算法,不能满足人们实时获取高精度地理位置信息的需求.现阶段对于手机的全球定位系统(GPS)芯片原始数据定位方法的研究较少,因此本文主要对利用手机GPS原始数据定位的可行性及定位算法进行了研究.利用Android 7.0系统提供的应用程序接口获取GPS芯片的原始数据参数,根据手机实用场景的速度特征,分别设计并实现了针对于静态场景的静态卡尔曼滤波和针对低速场景的动态卡尔曼滤波定位算法.通过静态实验以及电动车实验和步行实验的结果表明:与传统的定位算法相比,本文设计的静态卡尔曼滤波和动态卡尔曼滤波定位算法拥有更好的定位结果,更加接近实际行走路线,证明了利用手机GPS原始数据定位的可行性,同时也证明了设计的卡尔曼滤波算法可以提高定位精度,论文的研究结果为实现静态与动态的高精度手机定位算法提供了理论依据.     

A Multi‐Objective,Multi‐Criteria Approach to Improve Situational Awareness in Emergency Evacuation Routing Using Mobile Phone Data

Emergency services personnel face risks and uncertainty as they respond to natural and anthropogenic events. Their primary goal is to minimize the loss of life and property, especially in neighborhoods with high population densities, where response time is of great importance. In recent years, mobile phones have become a primary communication device during emergencies. The portability of cell phones and ease of information storage and dissemination has enabled effective implementation of cell phones by first responders and one of the most viable means of communication with the population. Using cellular location data during evacuation planning and response also provides increased awareness to emergency personnel. This article introduces a multi‐objective, multi‐criteria approach to determining optimum evacuation routes in an urban setting. The first objective is to calculate evacuation routes for individual cell phone locations, minimizing the time it would take for a sample population to evacuate to designated safe zones based on both distance and congestion criteria. The second objective is to maximize coverage of individual cell phone locations, using the criteria of underlying geographic features, distance and congestion. In summary, this article presents a network‐based methodology for providing additional analytic support to emergency services personnel for evacuation planning.     

MASTER: A multiple aspect view on trajectories

For many years trajectory data have been treated as sequences of space‐time points or stops and moves. However, with the explosion of the Internet of Things and the flood of big data generated on the Internet, such as weather channels and social network interactions, which can be used to enrich mobility data, trajectories become more and more complex, with multiple and heterogeneous data dimensions. The main challenge is how to integrate all this information with trajectories. In this article we introduce a new concept of trajectory, called multiple aspect trajectory, propose a robust conceptual and logical data model that supports a vast range of applications, and, differently from state‐of‐the‐art methods, we propose a storage solution for efficient multiple aspect trajectory queries. The main strength of our data model is the combination of simplicity and expressive power to represent heterogeneous aspects, ranging from simple labels to complex objects. We evaluate the proposed model in a tourism scenario and compare its query performance against the state‐of‐the‐art spatio‐temporal database SECONDO extension for symbolic trajectories.     

Conflation of OpenStreetMap and Mobile Sports Tracking Data for Automatic Bicycle Routing

This article investigates how workout trajectories from a mobile sports tracking application can be used to provide automatic route suggestions for bicyclists. We apply a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)‐based method for matching cycling tracks to a “bicycle network” extracted from crowdsourced OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, and evaluate its effective differences in terms of optimal routing compared with a simple geometric point‐to‐curve method. OSM has quickly established itself as a popular resource for bicycle routing; however, its high‐level of detail presents challenges for its applicability to popularity‐based routing. We propose a solution where bikeways are prioritized in map‐matching, achieving good performance; the HMM‐based method matched correctly on average 94% of the route length. In addition, we show that the extremely biased nature of the trajectory dataset, which is typical of volunteered user‐generated data, can be of high importance in terms of popularity‐based routing. Most computed routes diverged depending on whether the number of users or number of tracks was used as an indicator of popularity, which may imply varying preferences among different types of cyclists. Revising the number of tracks by diversity of users to surmount local biases in the data had a more limited effect on routing.     

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.     

Combining Geo‐SOM and Hierarchical Clustering to Explore Geospatial Data

Geo‐SOM is a useful geovisualization technique for revealing patterns in spatial data, but is ineffective in supporting interactive exploration of patterns hidden in different Geo‐SOM sizes. Based on the divide and group principle in geovisualization, the article proposes a new methodology that combines Geo‐SOM and hierarchical clustering to tackle this problem. Geo‐SOM was used to “divide” the dataset into several homogeneous subsets; hierarchical clustering was then used to “group” neighboring homogeneous subsets for pattern exploration in different levels of granularity, thus permitting exploration of patterns at multiple scales. An artificial dataset was used for validating the method's effectiveness. As a case study, the rush hour motorcycle flow data in Taipei City, Taiwan were analyzed. Compared with the best result generated solely by Geo‐SOM, the proposed method performed better in capturing the homogeneous zones in the artificial dataset. For the case study, the proposed method discovered six clusters with unique data and spatial patterns at different levels of granularity, while the original Geo‐SOM only identified two. Among the four hierarchical clustering methods, Ward's clustering performed the best in pattern discovery. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of the approach in visually and interactively exploring data and spatial patterns in geospatial data.     

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.     

Cartoblography: Experiments in Using and Organising the Spatial Context of Micro‐blogging

Blogs, micro‐blogs and online forums underpin a more interconnected world. People communicate ever more and are increasingly keen to explain and illustrate their lives; showing where they are and what they are doing. Desktop, online and mobile mapping landscapes have never been as rich or diverse yet this challenges cartography to adapt and remain relevant in the modern mapping world. We explore the spatial expression and potential value of micro‐blogging and Twitter as a social networking tool. Examples of “twitter maps” are reviewed that leverage the Twitter API and online map services to locate some component of the “tweet”. Scope, function and design are illustrated through development of two proof‐of‐concept map mashups that support collaborative real‐time mapping and the organisation and display of information for mass user events. Through the experiments in using and organising data in this way we demonstrate the value of “cartoblography”– a framework for mapping the spatial context of micro‐blogging.