Ndist2vec: Node with Landmark and New Distance to Vector Method for Predicting Shortest Path Distance along Road Networks

Abstract

The ability to quickly calculate or query the shortest path distance between nodes on a road network is essential for many real-world applications. However, the traditional graph traversal shortest path algorithm methods, such as Dijkstra and Floyd–Warshall, cannot be extended to large-scale road networks, or the traversal speed on large-scale networks is very slow, which is computational and memory intensive. Therefore, researchers have developed many approximate methods, such as the landmark method and the embedding method, to speed up the processing time of graphs and the shortest path query. This study proposes a new method based on landmarks and embedding technology, and it proposes a multilayer neural network model to solve this problem. On the one hand, we generate distance-preserving embedding for each node, and on the other hand, we predict the shortest path distance between two nodes of a given embedment. Our approach significantly reduces training time costs and is able to approximate the real distance with a relatively low Mean Absolute Error (MAE). The experimental results on a real road network confirm these advantages.