Where and when - about one approach to traffic analysis in the city

Abstract

This article deals with one model for analyzing urban mobility. Traditionally, the time domain is used in the analysis of movements. This is due to both traditional models of scheduling analysis and the classical approach to representing transport problems as traffic forecasting problems. At the same time, the development of telecommunication technologies and the penetration of smartphones have led to the fact that the movements of mobile devices can accurately measure traffic flows. Accordingly, the prediction of traffic flows is not the most urgent task - there is no need to predict what is being measured accurately. In modern conditions, data on flows are becoming a metric that reflects the processes (situations) in the city. For example, the data on movement between metro stations shows patterns of the use of the corresponding stations, which, in fact, describe the models of the functioning of the adjacent territories: is it a sleeping area where people leave in the morning to work and return in the evening, how are the working hours different on weekdays and weekends? days, etc. And any changes to such templates will signal a change in usage modes. Or, in other words, to be a reflection of some processes in the city. In this article, we are talking about one of the approaches to traffic analysis related to the search for movement patterns.