Exploring human activity patterns using taxicab static points

Abstract

This paper explores the patterns of human activities within a geographical space by adopting the taxicab static points which refer to the locations with zero speed along the tracking trajectory. We report the findings from both aggregated and individual aspects. Results from the aggregated level indicate the following: (1) Human activities exhibit an obvious regularity in time, for example, there is a burst of activity during weekend nights and a lull during the week. (2) They show a remarkable spatial drifting pattern, which strengthens our understanding of the activities in any given place. (3) Activities are heterogeneous in space irrespective of their drifting with time. These aggregated results not only help in city planning, but also facilitate traffic control and management. On the other hand, investigations on an individual level suggest that (4) activities witnessed by one taxicab will have different temporal regularity to another, and (5) each regularity implies a high level of prediction with low entropy by applying the Lempel-Ziv algorithm.