Recurrent origin–destination network for exploration of human periodic collective dynamics

Abstract

AbstractWhile daily periodic movements of individuals have been widely studied, their collective dynamics are not understood. To capture periodic collective dynamics, this article represents individual daily movements as a time series of directed weighted origin–destination (OD) networks, and proposes an approach to identify a sub‐network called the “recurrent OD network”, which contains frequent edges appearing in each day. Taxi trajectory data over a period of 6 months in Wuhan, China are used for the case study. Here, we extracted the recurrent OD networks for each 2‐h period on a given day, and compared them with the corresponding “major OD network” defined by both frequent and infrequent edges. Results show that the recurrent OD networks coincidentally exhibit spatially localized community structures and distinctive patterns of inflow and outflow for each region within a day. Overall, both methodology and findings in this study might make significant contributions in a range of fields, such as urban planning, regional economic development, and infectious disease control.