Estimating mobility of tourists. New Twitter-based procedure

Twitter has been actively researched as a human mobility proxy. Tweets can contain two classes of geographical metadata: the location from which a tweet was published, and the place where the tweet is estimated to have been published. Nevertheless, Twitter also presents tweets without any geographical metadata when querying for tweets on a specific location. This study presents a methodology which includes an algorithm for estimating the geographical coordinates to tweets for which Twitter doesn't assign any. Our objective is to determine the origin and the route that a tourist followed, even if Twitter doesn't return geographically identified data. This is carried out through geographical searches of tweets inside a defined area. Once a tweet is found inside an area, but its metadata contains no explicit geographical coordinates, its coordinates are estimated by iteratively performing geographical searches, with a decreasing geographical searching radius. This algorithm was tested in two touristic villages of Madrid (Spain) and a major city in Canada. A set of tweets without geographical coordinates in these areas were found and processed. The coordinates of a subset of them were successfully estimated.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. PID2020-116040RB-I00Universidade de Vigo/CISU

Identifying tourist-functional relations of urban places through Foursquare from Barcelona

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in GEOJOURNAL. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10708-019-10055-9Previous research has mainly focused on spatial relations among tourist attractions in urban areas. However, few studies have examined the functional relations between tourist attractions and other urban places (i.e. the flows of tourists between them). Therefore, this study focuses on quantification of the tourist-functional relations among Places of Interest (POIs) using Foursquare data from Barcelona. This represents an effort to highlight the important functional closeness between different types of POIs whose significance is not usually obvious from their spatial relationships. In order to quantify these functional relationships, this paper classifies Foursquare POIs into 22 categories according to their different usages and constructs a matrix of usage-flows to depict the connections among these different usages. A model of interaction values is introduced to describe the strength of relations and identify the dominant tourist usages. The results confirm that the functional centroids differ from these spatial distributions which only focused around tourist attractions. In addition to tourist attractions, places in the categories of Restaurants, Transport, and Hotels play important roles in functional relationship of tourism. The typical urban usages of tourists can be distinguished by the interaction values between these categories. Our model provides a practical method to quantify the interlinkage of usages of POIs based on tourist flows. In particular, LBSN data has potential as a method to observe the tourist-functional relations among places.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Identificación de patrones de movilidad urbana

Actualmente, los ciudadanos actuamos como sensores activos cuando compartimos información sobre nuestros movimientos y nuestra actividad durante nuestros desplazamientos en la ciudad, cuando estamos trabajando, en actividades de ocio o en nuestra domicilio. La propuesta de trabajo es estudiar el análisis del movimiento de las personas en una ciudad a través de la actividad geoposicionada en redes sociales como Twitter o Instagram (a través de sus API públicas). Se estudiará cómo y dónde se mueven los ciudadanos con el fin de detectar patrones de comportamiento, identificar puntos calientes y determinar si dichos puntos son fuentes de atracción o de repulsión de cierto tipo de personas y condiciona los desplazamientos urbanos.Rodríguez, LM. (2018). Identificación de patrones de movilidad urbana. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/110963TFG

Tweets geolocalizados para la movilidad diaria: metodología de análisis y detección de residencias en el área urbana de Valencia

Se analizan los datos geolocalizados de la red social Twitter con el fin de conocer las posibilidades que ofrecen para el estudio de las pautas de movilidad diarias, aplicado al caso del área urbana de Valencia, España. Basado en dicho análisis, se propone una metodología para el tratamiento y explotación de los datos, focalizada en la detección del lugar de residencia de sus usuarios, información básica en el análisis de la movilidad. El buen ajuste de los resultados con distintas fuentes de comprobación ratifica la adecuación de la metodología y las amplias posibilidades de la fuente analizada

Planificación inteligente de rutas turísticas en la ciudad de Valencia

[EN] This project describes Valencia Tourism Planner (VTP), an application that uses a recommender system and an automated planner to generate automatic and customized routes in Valencia. The personalization occurs at two stages: first, the recommender system obtains a list of activities according to the user profile and then, the user can specify some preferences with respect to the configuration of the agenda. This document describes in detail the design of the application and how the planning problem is built in order to take into account the user preferences. Finally, some experiments have been performed with the aim of analyzing the adaptability of the system to these user preferences.[ES] Este proyecto describe Planner Turismo Valencia (VTP), una aplicación que utiliza un sistema de recomendación y un planificador automatizado para generar rutas automáticas y personalizadas en Valencia. La personalización se produce en dos etapas: primero, el sistema de recomendación obtiene una lista de actividades de acuerdo con el perfil de usuario y, a continuación, el usuario puede especificar algunas preferencias con respecto a la configuración de la agenda. Este documento describe en detalle el diseño de la aplicación y cómo el problema de planificación se construye en base a las preferencias del usuario. Por último, se han realizado algunos experimentos con el objetivo de analizar la capacidad de adaptación del sistema a estas preferencias del usuario.Ibáñez Ruiz, J. (2015). Planificación inteligente de rutas turísticas en la ciudad de Valencia. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/65587Archivo delegad

INNER AREAS

Inner areas, as defned in the Italy’s National Strategy (SNAI), are part of the territory that plays a central role in the cultural and social fabric of our communities, are an essential component of our society, economy, and environment. However, they are still often neglected and overlooked, resulting in deterioration, abandonment, and social exclusion.For this reason, it is crucial that the felds of architecture, restoratio and architectural history and urban and territorial planning are committed to revitalizing and enhancing inner areas. These disciplines have the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to create sustainable and innovative solutions that can transform these territories into vibrant and liveable communities. Moreover, inner areas are an excellent laboratory for innovation in these disciplines. These areas provide a unique opportunity to experiment with new approaches and techniques that can then be applied to larger-scale urban and territorial planning projects. The challenges posed by inner areas require innovative thinking and creative solutions, making them an ideal testing ground for new ways. The papers presented in this special issue of Infolio are the result of the conference “Inner areas’ cultural, architectural and landscape heritage: study, enhancement and fruition. Potential driver for sustainable territorial development?” held in July 2022 at the University of Palermo. The conference brought together experts in the felds of architecture, restoration, and urban planning to discuss the central role of inner areas in our society and the need for innovative and sustainable solutions to revitalize and preserve them, being sometimes critical and some other prepositive. The papers explore a range of topics, including the use of technology in restoration, the importance of architectural history in urban planning and the role of community engagement in revitalization projects. The refections that emerged at the conference highlighted how inner areas are a crucial part of our territory and society, and their revitalization is essential for the well-being of our entire community and the preservation of our cultural heritage

Vers une plateforme cartographique web 2D/3D - dynamique pour la participation citoyenne

Les globes virtuels Web peuvent faciliter la communication entre les urbanistes et les citoyens. Des études récentes ont montré que les représentations 3D plutôt que 2D peuvent être plus efficaces dans la communication de l'information. Cependant, une telle visualisation présente plusieurs défis, y compris le niveau de détail et de réalisme. La compréhension par les citoyens de l'impact de leurs choix lors d’une consultation pourrait être améliorée en exploitant des simulations spatiotemporelles. Pourtant, la 4D (3D + temps) a rarement été intégrée aux plateformes de participation citoyenne. Ainsi, l'objectif principal de cette recherche était de développer une plateforme de cartographie Web combinant des visualisations multidimensionnelles (2D, 3D, 4D) de manière intuitive, afin que les citoyens puissent mieux évaluer et comprendre les enjeux de la consultation. Pour atteindre cet objectif, des lignes directrices de représentation adaptées à la consultation citoyenne ainsi que des simulations spatiotemporelles ont été conçues. Ces concepts ont ensuite été intégrés au sein d’une plateforme de cartographie Web 4D mettant en vedette le globe virtuel Cesium. Des tests utilisateurs ont été réalisés avec 21 participants expérimentés qui ont utilisé un questionnaire intégré à la plateforme pour valider les concepts. Le questionnaire contenait 5 scénarios réalistes simulés de participation citoyenne, dans lesquels les participants ont évalué l'intuitivité des représentations choisies ainsi que les concepts liés à cette recherche. Les résultats ont montré que les informations spatiales partagées au sein des consultations citoyennes peuvent être intuitivement représentées par une combinaison de dimensions 2D, 3D et 4D. De plus, cette combinaison permet également de mieux comprendre les impacts liés aux choix effectués lors de la consultation. La plateforme proposée dans ce projet est un premier pas vers un outil plus complet dédié à la participation citoyenne. Les futurs travaux viseront à utiliser la plateforme dans un contexte réel de consultation citoyenne.Web virtual globes can facilitate communication between urban planners and citizens. Recent studies have shown that 3D rather than 2D representations can be more effective in communicating information. However, such visualization presents several challenges, including the level of detail, realism and abstraction. Citizens' understanding of the impact of the choices they make during urban planning consultations could be improved by exploiting spatiotemporal simulations. Yet, 4D (3D + time) has rarely been integrated to citizen participation platforms. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to develop a web mapping platform combining multidimensional visualizations (2D, 3D, 4D) in an efficient and intuitive way, so that citizens can better assess and understand the issues of the consultation at stake. To achieve this objective, representation guidelines adapted to citizen consultation as well as spatiotemporal simulations were designed. These concepts were then integrated into a 4D web mapping platform featuring the virtual globe Cesium. User testing was done with 21 experienced participants who used a questionnaire integrated into the platform to validate the concepts. The questionnaire contained 5 simulated realistic case scenarios of citizen participation, in which the participants assessed the intuitiveness of the chosen representations as well as the concepts related to this research. Results showed that spatial information shared within citizen consultations can be intuitively represented through a combination of 2D, 3D and 4D dimensions. Moreover, this combination also offers a better understanding of the impacts related to choices made during the consultation. We consider that the platform proposed in this project is a first step toward a more complete tool dedicated to citizen participation. Future works will aim to use the platform in a real context of citizen consultation

Discovery of spatio-temporal patterns from location based social networks

Location Based Social Networks (LBSN) have become an interesting source for mining user behavior. These networks (e.g. Twitter, Instagram or Foursquare) collect spatio-temporal data from users in a way that they can be seen as a set of collective and distributed sensors on a geographical area. Processing this information in different ways could result in patterns useful for several application domains. These patterns include simple or complex user visits to places in a city or groups of users that can be described by a common behavior. The domains of application range from the recommendation of points of interest to visit and route planning for touristic recommender systems to city analysis and planning. This paper presents the analysis of data collected for several months from such LBSN inside the geographical area of two large cities. The goal is to obtain by means of unsupervised data mining methods sets of patterns that describe groups of users in terms of routes, mobility patterns and behavior profiles that can be useful for city analysis and mobility decisions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version