Volunteered Geographic Information for Monitoring and Exploring Cycling Activities in the Japanese Nationwide Geographical Space

Abstract

This study examined the effectiveness of volunteered geographic information (VGI) for monitoring and exploring cycling activities in the nationwide geographical space in Japan. A total of 16,945 GPS trajectories of cycling activities was collected from the popular VGI website for activity mapping and sharing. Analysis is conducted through three major phases; (1) Characteristics of VGI posted by online users, (2) time series patterns and (3) spatial distribution of cycling activities at an aggregated level. In the first analysis, 1,419 users were found in the VGI, and the number of VGI posted by users whose number of posts per user was up to 100 is about 53% of the total. In the time-series analysis, the comfortable seasons for outdoor recreation in Japan such as spring and autumn produce many cycling activities, but conversely, activities are reduced in winter. In the spatial distribution of GPS trajectories, though GPS data cover the whole of Japan, the tendency to concentrate in large metropolitan areas with high populations was prominent.