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Prediction of urban human mobility using large-scale taxi traces and its applications

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Abstract

This paper investigates human mobility patterns in an urban taxi transportation system. This work focuses on predicting humanmobility fromdiscovering patterns of in the number of passenger pick-ups quantity (PUQ) from urban hotspots. This paper proposes an improved ARIMA based prediction method to forecast the spatial-temporal variation of passengers in a hotspot. Evaluation with a large-scale realworld data set of 4 000 taxis’ GPS traces over one year shows a prediction error of only 5.8%. We also explore the application of the prediction approach to help drivers find their next passengers. The simulation results using historical real-world data demonstrate that, with our guidance, drivers can reduce the time taken and distance travelled, to find their next passenger, by 37.1% and 6.4%, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Xiaolong Li, Gang Pan, Zhaohui Wu, Guande Qi, Shijian Li, Wangsheng Zhang & Zonghui Wang

  2. Institut TELECOM SudParis, 91011, Evry Cedex, France

    Daqing Zhang

Authors
  1. Xiaolong Li
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  2. Gang Pan
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  3. Zhaohui Wu
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  4. Guande Qi
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  5. Shijian Li
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  6. Daqing Zhang
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  7. Wangsheng Zhang
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  8. Zonghui Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zonghui Wang.

Additional information

Xiaolong Li is a Masters student of the Department of Computer Science at Zhejiang University. He received his BSc in Computer Science from the Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China. His research interests include pervasive computing and data mining.

Gang Pan received his BSc and PhD in Computer Science in 1998 and 2004, respectively, from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. He has been with the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, since 2004, where he is currently an associate professor of computer science. His research interests include pervasive computing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. He serves as secretary of the CCF Technical Committee on Pervasive Computing. He has served as a program committee member for more than ten prestigious international conferences, such as ICCV, CVPR, and UIC, and as a reviewer for several prestigious journals, such as IEEE TPAMI, TIP, TSMC, TVCG, and PUC.

Zhaohui Wu is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Zhejiang University, China. His research interests include distributed artificial intelligence, semantic grid, and ubiquitous computing.Wu has a PhD in Computer Science from Zhejiang University. He is a standing council member of the China Computer Federation.

Guande Qi is a PhD student of the Department of Computer Science at Zhejiang University. He received his BSc in Life Sceince from Zhejaing University. His research interests include machine learning and data mining.

Shijian Li received his PhD from the College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, in 2006. He worked in the Institute Telecom SudParis, France, as a visiting scholar in 2010. His research interests include sensor networks, ubiquitous computing, and social computing. He has published over 40 papers in the above domains. He works as an editor of the International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks, and as reviewer or PC member of more than 10 conferences.

Daqing Zhang is a professor at the Institute Telecom SudParis, France. He obtained his PhD from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” and the University of L’Aquila, Italy in 1996. His research interests include pervasive and human-centric sensing, context-aware systems, social and community intelligence, mobile social networks, and pervasive healthcare. He is a member of IEEE and ACM. Contact him at daqing.zhang@itsudparis. eu.

Wangsheng Zhang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Zhejiang University. He received his MSc in Industrial Engineering from Tsinghua University. His research interests are in social networks and individual mobility patterns.

Zonghui Wang is an assistant professor in the College of Computer Science and Technology at Zhejiang University, China. He received his PhD from the College of Computer Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University in 2007. His research interests focus on intelligent transportation, distributed simulation, and computer architectures.

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Li, X., Pan, G., Wu, Z. et al. Prediction of urban human mobility using large-scale taxi traces and its applications. Front. Comput. Sci. 6, 111–121 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-011-1192-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-011-1192-6

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