Prediction of Intra-Urban Human Mobility by Integrating Regional Functions and Trip Intentions

Understanding intra-urban human mobility patterns and their potential driving forces are vital to city planning and commercial site selection. In this paper, we first investigate the functions of urban regions and how different region types dynamically influence people’s trip decisions. Furthermore, we characterize urban circadian rhythms by time-vary inter-regional transition probabilities between these regions with different functions, and integrate them into intervening opportunity model to predict human mobility. Public transportation card data in Shanghai are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model in terms of station passenger flows, travel time and trip flux. By taking regional function into consideration, the proposed model significantly improved the prediction accuracy. Quantitative analysis ulteriorly indicates that trip intentions and regional features are critical elements in trip flux prediction, especially in the afternoon and evening when people have an abundance of opportunities to travel by their own volition. When the function of a certain region changes, our model is able to make reasonable predictions accordingly. The results indicate the importance of considering individual travel motivation and regional function in modeling human mobility. The proposed model could serve as a guide for popularity and trip flux prediction in urban planning and reconstruction.