An Interdisciplinary Survey on Origin-destination Flows Modeling: Theory and Techniques

Origin-destination~(OD) flow modeling is an extensively researched subject across multiple disciplines, such as the investigation of travel demand in transportation and spatial interaction modeling in geography. However, researchers from different fields tend to employ their own unique research paradigms and lack interdisciplinary communication, preventing the cross-fertilization of knowledge and the development of novel solutions to challenges. This article presents a systematic interdisciplinary survey that comprehensively and holistically scrutinizes OD flows from utilizing fundamental theory to studying the mechanism of population mobility and solving practical problems with engineering techniques, such as computational models. Specifically, regional economics, urban geography, and sociophysics are adept at employing theoretical research methods to explore the underlying mechanisms of OD flows. They have developed three influential theoretical models: the gravity model, the intervening opportunities model, and the radiation model. These models specifically focus on examining the fundamental influences of distance, opportunities, and population on OD flows, respectively. In the meantime, fields such as transportation, urban planning, and computer science primarily focus on addressing four practical problems: OD prediction, OD construction, OD estimation, and OD forecasting. Advanced computational models, such as deep learning models, have gradually been introduced to address these problems more effectively. Finally, based on the existing research, this survey summarizes current challenges and outlines future directions for this topic. Through this survey, we aim to break down the barriers between disciplines in OD flow-related research, fostering interdisciplinary perspectives and modes of thinking.Comment: 49 pages, 6 figure

Probabilistički (vjerojatnosni) model posjeta kategorijama prostornih objekata u polazišno-odredišnoj matrici

Urbane migracije važan su podatak koji se koristi pri urbanom planiranju u prometne, ekonomske i druge svrhe. Migracije se bilježe polazišno-odredišnim matricama koje daju prostornu i vremensku komponentu urbanog kretanja. Tradicionalno, polazišno-odredišne matrice dobivaju se brojanjem ljudi i vozila na frekventnim područjima, a u novije vrijeme za njihovu se izradu koriste metode koje koriste podatke o korištenju javnih pokretnih (telekomunikacijskih) mreža za procjenu migracija. Takvim pristupom nije zabilježena svrha kretanja ljudi i razlozi putovanja. U ovom istraživanju je prikazana nova formalna (poopćena) metoda kategorizacije prostornih objekata i predviđanja vjerojatnosti posjeta kategorijama tih objekata, u svrhu omogućavanja točnijeg određivanja prirode urbanih migracija. Uvodno poglavlje formulira ciljeve istraživanja i kratak pregled strukture rada. Prvo poglavlje detaljno opisuje domenu problema i motivaciju za istraživanje. U drugom poglavlju opisani su podaci koji se koriste te njihovo pribavljanje i obrada. U trećem poglavlju razrađena je kategorizacija podataka. U četvrtom poglavlju je opisana izrada regresijskog modela i primjena na eksperimentalnim podacima. Zaključno poglavlje daje zaključak istraživanja. Korišteni su podaci iz baze prostornih podataka OpenStreetMap o namjeni objekata na području grada Shenzhena u Kini te GPS podaci putanja taksija u istom geografskom području. Prostorni objekti su kategorizirani pomoću žigova (atributa prostornih podataka koji opisuju objekte) unutar OpenStreetMapa koji opisuju namjenu objekata. Navedena kategorizacija je zatim proširena na taksi podatke.Urban migration is an important information used in urban planning for traffic, economic and other purposes. Migrations are recorded with origin-destination matrices which give the spatial and temporal components of urban motion. Traditionally, origin-destination matrices are obtained by counting people and vehicles in frequency domains, and in recent times methods used for their development are using data on the use of public mobile (telecommunication) networks for estimating migration. That approach does not report purpose of people’s movements and the reasons for traveling. In this research, a new formal (generalized) method of categorizing spatial objects and predicting probabilities of visits to the categories of these objects is introduced, with intention of enabling the more accurate understanding of the nature of urban migration. The introductory chapter formulates research objectives and a brief overview of the work structure. First chapter details the problem domain and motivation for research. The second chapter describes the data used and their acquisition and processing. In the third chapter the categorization of data was elaborated. The fourth chapter describes the creation of regression model and application on experimental data. The concluding chapter gives the conclusion of the research. Data from the OpenStreetMap spatial database on the use of objects in the Shenzhen city area in China and the GPS data of the taxiway in the same geographic area are used. Spatial objects are categorized by means of the spatial attributes describing objects within OpenStreetMap that describe the purpose of the objects. The categorization is then extended to the taxi data

Reconstructing the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Daily Life in the 19th Century City: A Historical GIS Approach

In recent years, historians and historical geographers have become interested in the use of GIS to study historical patterns, populations, and phenomena. The result has been the emergence of a new discipline, historical GIS. Despite the growing use of GIS across geography and history, the use of GIS in historical research has been limited largely to visualization of historical records, database management, and simple pattern analysis. This is, in part, due to a lack of accessible research on methodologies and spatial frameworks that outline the integration of both quantitative and qualitative historical sources for use in a GIS environment. The first objective of this dissertation is to develop a comprehensive geospatial research framework for the study of past populations and their environments. The second objective of this dissertation is to apply this framework to the study of daily life in the nineteenth-century city, an important area of scholarship for historical geographers and social historians. Other daily life studies have focused on various experiences of daily life, from domestic duties and child rearing to social norms and the experience of work in early factories. An area that has received little attention in recent years is the daily mobility of individuals as they moved about the ‘walking city’. This dissertation advances our understanding of the diurnal patterns of daily life by recreating the journey to work for thousands of individuals in the city of London, Ontario, and its suburbs in the late nineteenth century. Methodologies are created to capture past populations, their workplaces, and their relationship to the environments they called home. Empirical results outline the relationship between social class, gender, and the journey to work, as well as how social mobility was reflected through the quality of individuals’ residential and neighbourhood environments. The results provide a new perspective on daily mobility, social mobility, and environment in the late nineteenth-century city. Results suggest that individuals who were able to be upwardly socially mobile did so at the expense of substantial increases in their journey to work

Opportunities for short-sea shipping in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region: evidence based on discrete choice modelling

The thesis investigates the development of short-sea shipping (SSS) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region by studying the determinants of SSS, the stated choice preference of shippers and freight forwarders and the stated intentions of maritime carriers for SSS. It is purported the introduction of SSS in SADC could reduce socio-environmental problems currently faced such as road damage, road congestion, pollution and transport related accidents. Discrete choice modeling (DCM) is employed as the main methodology to study shipper and carrier behavior. Discrete choice modeling permits the construction of general utility functions incorporating various decision maker characteristics and choice attributes to elicit preference of respondents. The general postulate in DCM is that utility is derived from the properties of things rather than the actual thing per se. A particular benefit of DCM in this study is the elicitation of preference for services and interventions that have not been introduced by SSS. The first step in the study is a theoretical investigation of the potential of SSS in the SADC region. It highlights the policy initiatives, the barriers and enablers related to the development of SSS. The proposed SSS system would have three main roles: to offer an alternative mode of freight transport service between port cities, to serve as the main leg in an intermodal transport network, and to serve feeder services between hub-and-spoke ports. The findings reveal that, SSS has the theoretical potential to work in the SADC region, given the large geographic region, projected freight volumes and customs and trade policies the SADC region is pursuing. The second step in the study involves an a-priori study conducted to develop a general understanding of freight transport in SADC. For this purpose, a uniquely developed online survey was conducted across the SADC region to ascertain in particular: who the decision maker is in terms of freight mode choice; and what the significant attributes that influence freight mode choice are. The results reveal that both the shipper and the freight forwarder are involved in mode choice decisions, however the shipper being the dominant decision maker. Furthermore, the results of the exploded logit model reveal that the top five modal attributes that shippers consider most important are: reliability, transport cost, risk of damage, frequency of service and transit time. These results were subsequently employed to inform the shipper and carrier behavior studies. The third step entails the assessment of shipper behavior, where trip specific mode choice decisions are studied along five intra-urban origin-destination (O-D) paired routes (which would form the study corridors). Three of these corridors considered unimodal SSS, and the two considered intermodal SSS. Unimodal SSS was studied along the following corridors: Cape Town (South Africa)~ Walvis Bay (Namibia), Walvis Bay (Namibia) ~ Luanda (Angola) and Durban (South Africa) ~Beira (Mozambique); and intermodal SSS was studied along the following corridors: Durban (South Africa) ~ Harare (Zimbabwe) and Cape Town (South Africa) ~ Windhoek (Namibia). To develop the choice scenarios, d-efficient stated choice experiments were uniquely developed for each of the corridors with the following key modal attributes systematically varied and analyzed across respondents: service frequency, reliability in terms of arriving on time, expected delay, transport cost and transport time. Subsequently, the following choice models were developed: Binary Logit, Mixed Logit and Integrated Choice and Latent Variable Structure models for the unimodal corridors; and Multinomial Logit, Nested Logit and Cross Nested Logit models for the intermodal corridors. The results highlight that in addition to the modal attributes, mode choice decisions are driven by shipper characteristics and situational characteristics. Moreover, the unimodal SSS study reveals that underlying latent perceptions also influence freight mode choice decisions; while the intermodal SSS study reveal strong correlations in the intermodal SSS alternatives, which requires improved intermodal capability if SSS is to become competitive. The fourth step in the study entail the assessment of maritime carriers preference for SSS given varying levels of maritime conditions that include: dedicated freight volumes, income from freight, port dues discount, terminal handling fees discount and ship registration requirements. The results of an ordered logit model reveal that ship registration provisions and terminal handling charges are the most important to the development of SSS from a carrier side. Moreover, ship registration and maritime cabotage provisions require visitation to boost the participation of carriers in SSS. The last step of the study revisits the modeling results and considers their implications through the estimation of willingness-to-pay and attribute elasticities. The results were then employed to suggest policy actions and interventions to develop SSS

The spatio-temporal structures of society: modernity and ecological modernization as restructurations of time and space

Approaches in the social sciences have experienced a shift toward the themes of time and space, at least over the past three decades. This shift was clearly announced in the invitation made by Anthony Giddens in the early 1980s to retreat from the considerations of time and space as simple containers of social action. Furthermore, several other authors have pointed out at least three shortfalls of the status quo before 1980s: i) the lack of the temporal dimension in the sociological explanation of modernity, ii) the dismissal of the spatial particularity in the accounts of social change, and iii) the need to temporalize the geographical inquiries. How are social sciences accounts and social actions affected by transformation to the spatio-temporal structures of society? That is the general inquiry that inspired this thesis. The notion of spatio-temporal restructuration is introduced to capture the processes of restructuration that are taking place in the social sciences and in social life. Consequently, the study of the spatio-temporal structures of society includes epistemological and phenomenological research. A reorganization of social science spatio-temporal explanatory frameworks is proposed through epistemological research. A phenomenological investigation refers to the dialogical relationship between spatio-temporal arrangements and regimes, which together define the spatio-temporal structures of society. These two conditions of the research in spatio-temporal restructuration –epistemological and phenomenological- explain the twofold structure of the thesis

Negotiating ludic normativity in Facebook meme pages

Title: Negotiating ludic normativity in Facebook meme pages Author: Ondřej Procházka Affiliation: Department of Culture Studies, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences This thesis explores the capacity of Internet memes to inflect social realities in the communities organized around them on social media, particularly Facebook. Memes are not mere playful ‘jokes’ or ‘parodies’ spreading virally on the Internet in countless variations, they are also powerful tools for political investment aimed to sway public attention and opinions. Memes have been increasingly documented as a vital component in the unprecedented spread and ‘normalization’ of hateful sentiments and ideologies characterized by ‘fake news’ and ‘post-truth’ politics appealing to emotions rather than ‘facts’ in the digital mainstream. Based on author’s more than five-year observation of communities around Countryball memes, this work argues that much of the socio-cultural and communicative dynamics involving memes can be understood in terms of ludic play. The object of the study – Countryballs memes – are simple meme-comics featuring ball-shaped creatures in colors denoting nation-states while satirically reinventing international ‘drama’ through the prism of socio-cultural and linguistic stereotypes. Having become a household name among memes, Countryballs offer communicative resources to playfully engage not only with wider socio-political issues, but also to with the linguistic, semiotic and ideological boundaries of our communicative norms shaped by the affordances of social media. The present work demonstrates how play can be used as a useful concept for understanding not only how matters of public attention are packed, framed and transmitted in the digital culture via (Countryball) memes, but more importantly how such matters are in fact interpreted by those who engage with them. More specifically, it shows how play enables alternative modes of expression and meaning making with different normative patterns and preferences which stand outside ‘standard’, ‘rational’ or ‘civil’ expectations. And it is precisely ludic play that fosters different types of communication and sociality which are often done ‘just for fun’, however serious or offensive their effects may be. To identify these effects and their implications in the contemporary digital age, the thesis employs a discourse-analytical methodology informed by current advances in digital ethnography and sociolinguistics. It focuses on negotiations among participants in memetic communities about what counts as ‘appropriate’, ‘acceptable’ or ‘correct’ in their socio-communicative behavior. Together in four case studies, the present work provides a comprehensive account of how participants articulate, police, break and re-construct ludic normativity in connection with recent socio-political issues and digital culture at large. This includes the role of memes in the newly emerging forms of communication, in the rise of populism and nationalism, algorithmic manipulation and exploitation, curating digital content and more. The concept of play is continually revisited throughout the discussion against the developments in the scholarship on Internet memes and their ludic genealogy. In doing so, the thesis also revisits some of the traditional concepts such as the notion of ‘community’ and ‘communicative competence’ to arrive at more precise accounts of the concrete processes of globalization and digitalization in our societies and their effects

Probabilistički (vjerojatnosni) model posjeta kategorijama prostornih objekata u polazišno-odredišnoj matrici

Urbane migracije važan su podatak koji se koristi pri urbanom planiranju u prometne, ekonomske i druge svrhe. Migracije se bilježe polazišno-odredišnim matricama koje daju prostornu i vremensku komponentu urbanog kretanja. Tradicionalno, polazišno-odredišne matrice dobivaju se brojanjem ljudi i vozila na frekventnim područjima, a u novije vrijeme za njihovu se izradu koriste metode koje koriste podatke o korištenju javnih pokretnih (telekomunikacijskih) mreža za procjenu migracija. Takvim pristupom nije zabilježena svrha kretanja ljudi i razlozi putovanja. U ovom istraživanju je prikazana nova formalna (poopćena) metoda kategorizacije prostornih objekata i predviđanja vjerojatnosti posjeta kategorijama tih objekata, u svrhu omogućavanja točnijeg određivanja prirode urbanih migracija. Uvodno poglavlje formulira ciljeve istraživanja i kratak pregled strukture rada. Prvo poglavlje detaljno opisuje domenu problema i motivaciju za istraživanje. U drugom poglavlju opisani su podaci koji se koriste te njihovo pribavljanje i obrada. U trećem poglavlju razrađena je kategorizacija podataka. U četvrtom poglavlju je opisana izrada regresijskog modela i primjena na eksperimentalnim podacima. Zaključno poglavlje daje zaključak istraživanja. Korišteni su podaci iz baze prostornih podataka OpenStreetMap o namjeni objekata na području grada Shenzhena u Kini te GPS podaci putanja taksija u istom geografskom području. Prostorni objekti su kategorizirani pomoću žigova (atributa prostornih podataka koji opisuju objekte) unutar OpenStreetMapa koji opisuju namjenu objekata. Navedena kategorizacija je zatim proširena na taksi podatke.Urban migration is an important information used in urban planning for traffic, economic and other purposes. Migrations are recorded with origin-destination matrices which give the spatial and temporal components of urban motion. Traditionally, origin-destination matrices are obtained by counting people and vehicles in frequency domains, and in recent times methods used for their development are using data on the use of public mobile (telecommunication) networks for estimating migration. That approach does not report purpose of people’s movements and the reasons for traveling. In this research, a new formal (generalized) method of categorizing spatial objects and predicting probabilities of visits to the categories of these objects is introduced, with intention of enabling the more accurate understanding of the nature of urban migration. The introductory chapter formulates research objectives and a brief overview of the work structure. First chapter details the problem domain and motivation for research. The second chapter describes the data used and their acquisition and processing. In the third chapter the categorization of data was elaborated. The fourth chapter describes the creation of regression model and application on experimental data. The concluding chapter gives the conclusion of the research. Data from the OpenStreetMap spatial database on the use of objects in the Shenzhen city area in China and the GPS data of the taxiway in the same geographic area are used. Spatial objects are categorized by means of the spatial attributes describing objects within OpenStreetMap that describe the purpose of the objects. The categorization is then extended to the taxi data

Probabilistički (vjerojatnosni) model posjeta kategorijama prostornih objekata u polazišno-odredišnoj matrici

Urbane migracije važan su podatak koji se koristi pri urbanom planiranju u prometne, ekonomske i druge svrhe. Migracije se bilježe polazišno-odredišnim matricama koje daju prostornu i vremensku komponentu urbanog kretanja. Tradicionalno, polazišno-odredišne matrice dobivaju se brojanjem ljudi i vozila na frekventnim područjima, a u novije vrijeme za njihovu se izradu koriste metode koje koriste podatke o korištenju javnih pokretnih (telekomunikacijskih) mreža za procjenu migracija. Takvim pristupom nije zabilježena svrha kretanja ljudi i razlozi putovanja. U ovom istraživanju je prikazana nova formalna (poopćena) metoda kategorizacije prostornih objekata i predviđanja vjerojatnosti posjeta kategorijama tih objekata, u svrhu omogućavanja točnijeg određivanja prirode urbanih migracija. Uvodno poglavlje formulira ciljeve istraživanja i kratak pregled strukture rada. Prvo poglavlje detaljno opisuje domenu problema i motivaciju za istraživanje. U drugom poglavlju opisani su podaci koji se koriste te njihovo pribavljanje i obrada. U trećem poglavlju razrađena je kategorizacija podataka. U četvrtom poglavlju je opisana izrada regresijskog modela i primjena na eksperimentalnim podacima. Zaključno poglavlje daje zaključak istraživanja. Korišteni su podaci iz baze prostornih podataka OpenStreetMap o namjeni objekata na području grada Shenzhena u Kini te GPS podaci putanja taksija u istom geografskom području. Prostorni objekti su kategorizirani pomoću žigova (atributa prostornih podataka koji opisuju objekte) unutar OpenStreetMapa koji opisuju namjenu objekata. Navedena kategorizacija je zatim proširena na taksi podatke.Urban migration is an important information used in urban planning for traffic, economic and other purposes. Migrations are recorded with origin-destination matrices which give the spatial and temporal components of urban motion. Traditionally, origin-destination matrices are obtained by counting people and vehicles in frequency domains, and in recent times methods used for their development are using data on the use of public mobile (telecommunication) networks for estimating migration. That approach does not report purpose of people’s movements and the reasons for traveling. In this research, a new formal (generalized) method of categorizing spatial objects and predicting probabilities of visits to the categories of these objects is introduced, with intention of enabling the more accurate understanding of the nature of urban migration. The introductory chapter formulates research objectives and a brief overview of the work structure. First chapter details the problem domain and motivation for research. The second chapter describes the data used and their acquisition and processing. In the third chapter the categorization of data was elaborated. The fourth chapter describes the creation of regression model and application on experimental data. The concluding chapter gives the conclusion of the research. Data from the OpenStreetMap spatial database on the use of objects in the Shenzhen city area in China and the GPS data of the taxiway in the same geographic area are used. Spatial objects are categorized by means of the spatial attributes describing objects within OpenStreetMap that describe the purpose of the objects. The categorization is then extended to the taxi data