Analysis and prediction of carsharing demand based on data mining methods

Abstract

With the development of the sharing economy, carsharing is a major achievement in the current mode of transportation in sharing economies. Carsharing can effectively alleviate traffic congestion and reduce the travel cost of residents. However, due to the randomness of users’ travel demand, carsharing operators are faced with problems, such as imbalance in vehicle demand at stations. Therefore, scientific prediction of users’ travel demand is important to ensure the efficient operation of carsharing. The main purpose of this study is to use gradient boosting decision tree to predict the travel demand of station-based carsharing users. The case study is conducted in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, China. To improve the accuracy, gradient boosting decision tree is designed to predict the demands of users at different stations at various times based on the actual operating data of carsharing. The prediction results are compared with results of the autoregressive integrated moving average. The conclusion shows that gradient boosting decision tree has higher prediction accuracy. This study can provide a reference value for user demand prediction in practical application.