Movement In Urban Environments Research Articles

Investigating pedestrian behaviour in urban environments: A Wi-Fi tracking and machine learning approach

Urban geometry plays a critical role in determining paths for pedestrian flow in urban areas. To improve the urban planning processes and to enhance quality of life for end-users in urban spaces, a better understanding of the factors influencing pedestrian movement is required by decision-makers within the urban design and planning industry. The aim of this study is to present a novel means to assess pedestrian routing in urban environments. As a unique contribution to knowledge and practice, this study: (a) enhances the body of knowledge by developing a conceptual model to assess and classify pedestrian movement behaviours, utilising machine learning algorithms and location data in conjunction with spatial attributes, and (b) extends previous research by revealing spatial visibility as a driver for pedestrian movement in urban environments. The importance of the findings lies in the perspective of revealing novel insights concerning individual preferences and behaviours of end-users and the utilisation of urban spaces. The approaches developed can be utilised for observations in large-scale contexts, as an addition to traditional methods. Application of the model in a high pedestrian traffic-dense retail urban area in London reveals clear and consistent relationships amongst spatial visibility, individuals’ motivation, and knowledge of the area. Key behaviours established in the study area are grouped into two activity categories: (i) Utilitarian walking (with motivation - expert and novice striders) and (ii) Leisure walking (no motivation - expert and novice strollers). The approach offers an insightful and automated means to understand pedestrian flow in urban contexts and informs wider wayfinding, walkability, and transportation knowledge.

Edge-based passive crowd monitoring through WiFi Beacons

Tracking people’s flows has become crucial, not only for safety and security, but also for numerous practical business applications and better management of urban spaces, facilities and services. In this paper, we proposed methodologies that, exploiting IoT technology deployed at the edge of the network, allow for the analysis of people’s movement in urban environments, both outdoors and indoors. In particular, leveraging the use of WiFi probe packets sent by smart devices carried by people on the move, we first describe an implementation of our methodology using off-the-shelf hardware to count people boarding public transportation vehicles. We then present an alternate implementation using commercial WiFi scanners connected to the edge and leveraging suitably deployed virtual network functions to process the data collected by a OneM2M IoT platform, proposing also a mobility tracking procedure that can be applied to anonymized data provided by commercial WiFi scanners. Our experimental results show that the proposed approaches to people counting and mobility detection can achieve a good level of accuracy, while overall carrying a low price tag.

Dengue virus in humans and mosquitoes and their molecular characteristics in northeastern Thailand 2016-2018.

Dengue is hyperendemic in most Southeast Asian countries including Thailand, where all four dengue virus serotypes (DENV-1 to -4) have circulated over different periods and regions. Despite dengue cases being annually reported in all regions of Thailand, there is limited data on the relationship of epidemic DENV infection between humans and mosquitoes, and about the dynamics of DENV during outbreaks in the northeastern region. The present study was conducted in this region to investigate the molecular epidemiology of DENV and explore the relationships of DENV infection in humans and in mosquitoes during 2016–2018. A total of 292 dengue suspected patients from 11 hospitals and 902 individual mosquitoes (at patient’s houses and neighboring houses) were recruited and investigated for DENV serotypes infection using PCR. A total of 103 patients and 149 individual mosquitoes were DENV -positive. Among patients, the predominant DENV serotypes in 2016 and 2018 were DENV-4 (74%) and DENV-3 (53%) respectively, whereas in 2017, DENV-1, -3 and -4 had similar prevalence (38%). Additionally, only 19% of DENV infections in humans and mosquitoes at surrounding houses were serotypically matched, while 81% of infections were serotypically mismatched, suggesting that mosquitoes outside the residence may be an important factor of endemic dengue transmission. Phylogenetic analyses based on envelope gene sequences showed the genotype I of both DENV-1 and DENV-4, and co-circulation of the Cosmopolitan and Asian I genotypes of DENV-2. These strains were closely related to concurrent strains in other parts of Thailand and also similar to strains in previous epidemiological profiles in Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia. These findings highlight genomic data of DENV in this region and suggest that people’s movement in urban environments may result in mosquitoes far away from the residential area being key determinants of DENV epidemic dynamics.

Modelling the effect of landmarks on pedestrian dynamics in urban environments

Landmarks have been identified as relevant and prominent urban elements, explicitly involved in human navigation processes. Despite the understanding accumulated around their functions, landmarks have not been included in simulation models of pedestrian movement in urban environments. In this paper, we describe an Agent-Based Model (ABM) for pedestrian movement simulation that incorporates the role of on-route and distant landmarks in agents' route choice behaviour. Route choice models with and without landmarks were compared by using four scenarios: road distance minimisation, least cumulative angular change, road distance minimisation and landmarks, least cumulative angular change and landmarks. The city centre of London was used as a case study and a set of GPS trajectories was employed to evaluate the model. The introduction of landmarks led to more heterogeneous patterns that diverge from the minimisation models. Landmark-based navigation brought about high pedestrian volumes along the river (up to 13% of agents) and the boundaries of the parks (around 8% of the agents). Moreover, the model evaluation showed that the results of the landmark-based scenarios were not significantly different from the GPS trajectories in terms of cumulative landmarkness, whereas the other scenarios were. This implies that our proposed landmark-based route choice approach was better able to reproduce human navigation. At the street-segment level, the pedestrian volumes emerging from the scenarios were comparable to the trajectories' volumes in most of the case study area; yet, under- and over-estimation were observed along the banks of the rivers and across green areas (up to +7%, −11% of volumes) in the landmark-based scenarios, and along major roads (up to +11% of volumes) in the least cumulative angular change scenario. While our model could be expanded in relation to the agents' cognitive representation of the environment, e.g. by considering other relevant urban elements and accounting for individual spatial knowledge differences, the inclusion of landmarks in route choice models results in more plausible agents that make use of relevant urban information.

Вплив пандемії COVID-19 на безпеку дорожнього руху в Україні

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a serious problem for the modern transportation system in the world and hasforced society to look at the safety of movement in a different way. Public transport is the most important socio-economicindustry, but at the same time, almost all types are areas of increased risk of infection. This aspect caused a decrease inthe use of public transport, prompted an increase in the dynamics of motorization and the spread of micromobility asa new type of movement in urban environments. The article examines the transformations in the road transport sectorafter the introduction of anti-pandemic measures and their impact on ensuring road safety. In this regard, attention isdrawn to the problems requiring urgent legal regulation and the reaction of the relevant state institutions that ensuresafety in the field of road traffic. It is concluded that the pandemic has affected road safety processes and «made»adjustments to the sustainable development of the road transport system. The result of such changes has been a rapidincrease in individual vehicles, various means of micro-mobility, which has identified new challenges for legal regulationand future strategic planning. Road safety policy now needs to change at an accelerated pace in line with the new realitiesposed by anti-epidemiological measures. After all, the reduction of road accidents, mortality and injuries of road usersmust be prevented through the introduction of new modern solutions and rapid response of relevant government institutions.Key words: safety of road traffic, pandemic COVID-19, anti-epidemiological measures, public transport.

Space, Place, and Agency in the Roe 8 Highway Protest, Western Australia

The struggle to save the Beeliar Wetlands, an urban remnant bushland in Perth, Western Australia, demonstrates elements of both urban social and urban environmental movements. At the end of 2016, 30 years of objection to the continuation of the Roe Highway development (Roe 8) culminated in months of intense protest leading up to a state election and a cessation of work in 2017. During the long-running campaign, protestors fought to preserve high-conservation-value bushland that was contained in the planned road reserve. At the heart of this dispute were competing spatial uses. This article will analyze four protest actions from the dispute using Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the production of space, and will demonstrate that the practices of protest gave those fighting to preserve Roe 8 the agency to reinscribe meaning to the natural uses of the Beeliar Wetlands over and against the uses privileged by the state.

Movement as a means of social (re)production: using GIS to measure social integration across urban landscapes

This paper contributes to the archaeological study of movement in urban environments where built forms and natural features worked together to play a key role in structuring human mobility. We propose an analytical method using least cost analysis in a Geographic Information System (GIS) to empirically measure social integration. The method defines mobility as the potential for pedestrian movement, and identifies locations where people were most likely to walk to or through in a landscape. The calculated mobility data are then employed to identify with whom people were most likely to interact and the degree to which they were socially connected with particular groups of society (social networks), and integrated within society as a whole. The results reveal underlying spatial complexities that in conjunction with other archaeological data can be correlated to social, political, or economic inequality in ancient cities. We apply the method to measure social integration between four socioeconomic groups at the Late Classic (AD 600–900) Maya city of Copán, Honduras.

Realistic Fireteam Movement in Urban Environments

Realistic simulations of the movement of infantry in urban environments with 3D models and at interactive rates is of wide and enduring interest. Many video games have attempted it, and military simulations are increasingly doing the same. Previous attempts have fallen short in two areas: properly coordinating movement, and adequate modeling of the detection of hostile targets. Novel algorithms to simulate fireteam movement and visual scanning appropriate to urban environments are described. Measurements of the computational performance of the most expensive components of the approach are provided.