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Modelling the spatio-temporal dynamic of traffic flows with gravity models and mobile phone data

  • Maurizio Carpita
  • Rodolfo Metulini

The analysis of origin-destination traffic flows may be useful in many contexts of application (e.g., urban planning, tourism economics) and have been commonly studied through the gravity model, which states that flows are proportional to ''masses" of both origin and destination, and inversely proportional to distance between them. Using data on the flow of mobile phone SIM among different aree di censimento, recorded hourly basis for several months and provided by FasterNet in the context of MoSoRe project, in this work we characterize and model the dynamic of such flows over the time in the strongly urbanized and flood-prone area of the Mandolossa (western outskirts of Brescia, northern Italy), with the aim of predicting the traffic flow during flood episodes. Whereas a traditional ”static” mass explanatory variable is represented by residential population (Pop), or by gross domestic product (GDP), here we propose to use a most accurate set of explanatory variables in order to better account for the dynamic over the time. First, we employ a time-varying mass variable represented by the number of city-users by area and by time period, which has been estimated from mobile phone data (provided by TIM) using functional data approach and already adopted to derive crowding maps for flood exposure. Secondly, we include in the model a proper set of factors such as areal and time dummies, and a novel set of indices related to (e.g.) the number and the type of streets, the number of offices, restaurants or cinemas, which may be retrieved from OpenStreetMap. The joint use of these two novel sets of explanatory variables should allow us to obtain a better linear fitting of the gravity model and a better traffic flow prediction for the flood risk evaluation.

  • Keywords:
  • Mobile phone network,
  • Gravity model,
  • Origin-destination data,
  • Flooding risk,
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Maurizio Carpita

University of Brescia, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-7998-5102

Rodolfo Metulini

University of Salerno, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-9575-5136

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  3. Balistrocchi, M., Metulini, R, Carpita, M., Ranzi, R. (2020). Dynamic maps of human exposure to floods based on mobile phone data Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 20, pp. 3485–3500.
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  8. Metulini, R, Carpita, M. (2021). A spatio-temporal indicator for city users based on mobile phone signals and administrative data Social Indicators Research, 156(2-3), pp. 761–781.
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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Pages: 99-104
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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  • Publication Year: 2021
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Modelling the spatio-temporal dynamic of traffic flows with gravity models and mobile phone data

Authors

Maurizio Carpita, Rodolfo Metulini

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-461-8.19

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

ASA 2021 Statistics and Information Systems for Policy Evaluation

Book Subtitle

BOOK OF SHORT PAPERS of the on-site conference

Editors

Bruno Bertaccini, Luigi Fabbris, Alessandra Petrucci

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2021

Copyright Information

© 2021 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-461-8

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-461-8

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-462-5

Series Title

Proceedings e report

Series ISSN

2704-601X

Series E-ISSN

2704-5846

129

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