Understanding Mobility of Aalborg Commuters: A case study with a Floating Car Dataset

Abstract

This research focuses on investigating human commuting patterns within the GeoVisual Analytics (GVA) environment using Floating Car Datasets (FCD) collected in Aalborg municipality between years 2012 – 2014. According to studies in the transportation domain, physical commuting remains an actual routine in the everyday lifestyle of modern society. And yet, insufficient number of studies have been conducted in this direction nor presented from the GVA analytics perspective that would provide a more indepth understanding. To contribute to the existing studies, we investigate the spatio-temporal distribution of the travel behaviour of Aalborg commuters from location-to-location during peak and off-peak hours throughout working days and weekends with morning and afternoon rush hours. Accordingly, we propose an interactive GVA environment as an essential tool for the extensive analysis of human mobility data to ensure effective exploratory interpretation of the commuters’ travel behaviour while following the analysis workflow provided by the traffic experts. The GVA reveals ongoing dynamic processes in traffic flow over space and time to help local authorities for a better decision-making process in traffic management.