Using Geotagged Photos to Study Visitors Mobility in Urban Parks during Shadow

Abstract

The share of urban parks in a metropolitan is mostly small, nevertheless, they are one of the main attractions affecting the experience of mobility in urban cities. Since shaded areas influence active traveling, e.g., walking and cycling, the effect of shaded areas in cities is currently being investigated, specifically as temperatures continue to rise. In this study, we analyze mobility patterns of photographers by mining spatio-temporal descriptors associated with crowdsourced geotagged photos from Flickr integrated with the computation of the 3D line of sight to the sun position for shadow computation. Mining photographers' trajectories with unsupervised location clustering are used to recover knowledge about the main attractions visited in urban parks while considering shadow analysis. Such an approach can contribute to diverse city management aspects, including urban design and planning, tourism and more. Preliminary results for Central Park in Manhattan are presented, showing an original approach for the retrieval of relevant valuable information on visitors mobility patterns and hot spots identification while considering building shadows.