Identifying Hidden Visits from Sparse Call Detail Record Data

Despite a large body of literature on trip inference using call detail record (CDR) data, a fundamental understanding of their limitations is lacking. In particular, because of the sparse nature of CDR data, users may travel to a location without being revealed in the data, which we refer to as a "hidden visit". The existence of hidden visits hinders our ability to extract reliable information about human mobility and travel behavior from CDR data. In this study, we propose a data fusion approach to obtain labeled data for statistical inference of hidden visits. In the absence of complementary data, this can be accomplished by extracting labeled observations from more granular cellular data access records, and extracting features from voice call and text messaging records. The proposed approach is demonstrated using a real-world CDR dataset of 3 million users from a large Chinese city. Logistic regression, support vector machine, random forest, and gradient boosting are used to infer whether a hidden visit exists during a displacement observed from CDR data. The test results show significant improvement over the naive no-hidden-visit rule, which is an implicit assumption adopted by most existing studies. Based on the proposed model, we estimate that over 10% of the displacements extracted from CDR data involve hidden visits. The proposed data fusion method offers a systematic statistical approach to inferring individual mobility patterns based on telecommunication records

Kalman Filter Applications for Traffic Management

An on­line calibration approach for dynamic traffic assignment systems has been developed. The approach is general and flexible and makes no assumptions on the type of the DTA system, the models or the data that it can handle. Therefore, it is applicable to a wide variety of tools including simulation­based and analytical, as well as microscopic and macroscopic models. The objective of the on­line calibration approach is to introduce a systematic procedure that will use the available data to steer the model parameters to values closer to the realized ones. The output of the on­line calibration is therefore a set of parameter values that --when used as input for traffic estimation and prediction-- minimizes the discrepancy between the simulated (estimated and predicted) and the observed traffic conditions. The scope of the on­line calibration is neither to duplicate nor to substitute for the off­line calibration process. Instead, the two processes are complementary and synergistic in nature. The on­line calibration problem is formulated as a state­space model. State­space models have been extensively studied and efficient algorithms have been developed, such as the Kalman Filter for linear models. Because of the non­linear nature of the on­line calibration formulation, modified Kalman Filter methodologies have been presented. The most straightforward extension is the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), in which optimal quantities are approximated via first order Taylor series expansion (linearization) of the appropriate equations. The Limiting EKF is a variation of the EKF that eliminates the need to perform the most computationally intensive steps of the algorithm on­line. The use of the Limiting EKF provides dramatic improvements in terms of computational performance. The Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) is an alternative filter that uses a deterministic sampling approach. The computational complexity of the UKF is of the same order as that of the EKF. Empirical results suggest that joint on­line calibration of demand and supply parameters can improve estimation and prediction accuracy of a DTA system. While the results obtained from this real network application are promising, they should be validated in further empirical studies. In particular, the scalability of the approach to larger, more complex networks needs to be investigated. The results also suggest that --in this application-- the EKF has more desirable properties than the UKF (which may be expected to have superior performance over the EKF), while the UKF seems to perform better in terms of speeds than in terms of counts. Other researchers have also encountered situations where the UKF does not outperform the EKF, e.g. LaViola, J. J., Jr. (2003) and van Rhijn et al. (2005). The Limiting EKF provides accuracy comparable to that of the best algorithm (EKF), while providing order(s) of magnitude improvement in computational performance. Furthermore, the LimEKF algorithm is that it requires a single function evaluation irrespective of the dimension of the state vector (while the computational complexity of the EKF and UKF algorithms increases proportionally with the state dimension). This property makes this an attractive algorithm for large­scale applications

Calibrating Path Choices and Train Capacities for Urban Rail Transit Simulation Models Using Smart Card and Train Movement Data

Transit network simulation models are often used for performance and retrospective analysis of urban rail systems, taking advantage of the availability of extensive automated fare collection (AFC) and automated vehicle location (AVL) data. Important inputs to such models, in addition to origin-destination flows, include passenger path choices and train capacity. Train capacity, which has often been overlooked in the literature, is an important input that exhibits a lot of variabilities. The paper proposes a simulation-based optimization (SBO) framework to simultaneously calibrate path choices and train capacity for urban rail systems using AFC and AVL data. The calibration is formulated as an optimization problem with a black-box objective function. Seven algorithms from four branches of SBO solving methods are evaluated. The algorithms are evaluated using an experimental design that includes five scenarios, representing different degrees of path choice randomness and crowding sensitivity. Data from the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system is used as a case study. The data is used to generate synthetic observations used as "ground truth". The results show that the response surface methods (particularly Constrained Optimization using Response Surfaces) have consistently good performance under all scenarios. The proposed approach drives large-scale simulation applications for monitoring and planning

Measuring Regularity of Individual Travel Patterns

Regularity is an important property of individual travel behavior, and the ability to measure it enables advances in behavior modeling, mobility prediction, and customer analytics. In this paper, we propose a methodology to measure travel behavior regularity based on the order in which trips or activities are organized. We represent individuals' travel over multiple days as sequences of 'travel events' - discrete and repeatable behavior units explicitly defined based on the research question and the available data. We then present a metric of regularity based on entropy rate, which is sensitive to both the frequency of travel events and the order in which they occur. The methodology is demonstrated using a large sample of pseudonymised transit smart card transaction records from London, U.K. The entropy rate is estimated with a procedure based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform. The results confirm that the order of travel events is an essential component of regularity in travel behavior. They also demonstrate that the proposed measure of regularity captures both conventional patterns and atypical routine patterns that are regular but not matched to the 9-to-5 working day or working week. Unlike existing measures of regularity, our approach is agnostic to calendar definitions and makes no assumptions regarding periodicity of travel behavior. The proposed methodology is flexible and can be adapted to study other aspects of individual mobility using different data sources.Transport for London (Organization

Reducing Subway Crowding: Analysis of an Off-Peak Discount Experiment in Hong Kong

Increases in ridership are outpacing capacity expansions in several transit systems. By shifting their focus to demand management, agencies can instead influence how customers use the system and get more out of their present capacity. This paper uses Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) system as a case study to explore the effects of crowding reduction strategies and how to use fare data to support these measures. The MTR system introduced a discount in September 2014 to encourage users to travel before the peak and reduce onboard crowding. To understand the impacts of this intervention, first, existing congestion patterns were reviewed and a clustering analysis was used to reveal typical travel patterns among users. Then, changes to users' departure times were studied at three levels to evaluate the promotion's effects. Patterns of all users were measured across both the whole system and for specific rail segments. The travel patterns of the user groups, who have more homogeneous usage characteristics, were also evaluated and revealed groups who had differing responses to the promotion. The incentive was found to have affected morning travel, particularly at the beginning of the peak hour period and among users with commuter-like behavior. Aggregate and group-specific elasticities were developed to inform future promotions and the results were also used to suggest other potential incentive designs

The path inference filter: model-based low-latency map matching of probe vehicle data

We consider the problem of reconstructing vehicle trajectories from sparse sequences of GPS points, for which the sampling interval is between 10 seconds and 2 minutes. We introduce a new class of algorithms, called altogether path inference filter (PIF), that maps GPS data in real time, for a variety of trade-offs and scenarios, and with a high throughput. Numerous prior approaches in map-matching can be shown to be special cases of the path inference filter presented in this article. We present an efficient procedure for automatically training the filter on new data, with or without ground truth observations. The framework is evaluated on a large San Francisco taxi dataset and is shown to improve upon the current state of the art. This filter also provides insights about driving patterns of drivers. The path inference filter has been deployed at an industrial scale inside the Mobile Millennium traffic information system, and is used to map fleets of data in San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockholm and Porto.Comment: Preprint, 23 pages and 23 figure