Optimization and Process Design Tools for Estimation of Weekly Exposure to Air Pollution Integrating Travel Patterns during Pregnancy

A growing number of international studies have highlighted that ambient air pollution exposures are related to different health outcomes. To do so, researchers need to estimate exposure levels to air pollution throughout everyday life. In the literature, the most commonly used estimate is based on home address only or taking into account, in addition, the work address. However, several studies have shown the importance of daily mobility in the estimate of exposure to air pollutants. In this context, we developed an R procedure that estimates individual exposures combining home addresses, several important places, and itineraries of the principal mobility during a week. It supplies researchers a useful tool to calculate individual daily exposition to air pollutants weighting by the time spent at each of the most frequented locations (work, shopping, residential address, etc.) and while commuting. This task requires the efficient calculation of travel time matrices or the examination of multimodal transport routes. This procedure is freely available from the Equit’Area project website: (https://www.equitarea.org). This procedure is structured in three parts: the first part is to create a network, the second allows to estimate main itineraries of the daily mobility and the last one tries to reconstitute the level of air pollution exposure. One main advantage of the tool is that the procedure can be used with different spatial scales and for any air pollutant.

Exploring Temporal Activity Patterns of Urban Areas Using Aggregated Network-driven Mobile Phone Data:A Case Study of Wuhu,China

The increasing availability of data in the urban context(e.g.,mobile phone,smart card and social media data)allows us to study urban dynamics at much finer temporal resolutions(e.g.,diurnal urban dynamics).Mobile phone data,for instance,are found to be a useful data source for extracting diurnal human mobility patterns and for understanding urban dynamics.While previous studies often use call detail record(CDR)data,this study deploys aggregated network-driven mobile phone data that may reveal human mobility patterns more comprehensively and can mitigate some of the privacy concerns raised by mobile phone data usage.We first propose an analytical framework for characterizing and classifying urban areas based on their temporal activity patterns extracted from mobile phone data.Specifically,urban areas’diurnal spatiotemporal signatures of human mobility patterns are obtained through longitudinal mobile phone data.Urban areas are then classified based on the obtained signatures.The classification provides insights into city planning and development.Using the proposed framework,a case study was implemented in the city of Wuhu,China to understand its urban dynamics.The empirical study suggests that human activities in the city of Wuhu are highly concentrated at the Traffic Analysis Zone(TAZ)level.This large portion of local activities suggests that development and planning strategies that are different from those used by metropolitan Chinese cities should be applied in the city of Wuhu.This article concludes with discussions on several common challenges associated with using network-driven mobile phone data,which should be addressed in future studies.

Analysis of Transportation Users’ Preferences and Attitudes for Identifying Micro-Level Determinants of Transportation Network Companies’ (TNCs) Growth

Over the last decade, the popularity of Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) as a mode of travel has been increasing at a steady pace. This trend highlights the importance of identifying the determinants that influence transportation users to adopt TNCs as a preferred mode choice and the impacts of such preferences on their travel patterns and transportation network operation. This paper reports on a recent study undertaken in Birmingham, AL aiming at understanding and documenting the factors that influence transportation users to select TNCs (such as Uber/Lyft) for completing typical day trips. In doing so, a travel diary questionnaire survey was developed in accordance with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) Manual on Transportation Engineering Studies using the Qualtrics Research Core platform. The questionnaire was used to survey over 450 transportation users in the Birmingham Metro area. The survey participants provided detailed trip information for a typical 24-hr day along with demographic data and travel preference information. The survey responses provide high-resolution micro-level indicators of travel preferences and behaviors in a TNC-served area, which is a much-needed type of information for researchers and transportation planning agencies.

How has COVID-19 changed trip patterns by purpose in China?

COVID-19 has upended the whole world. Due to travel restrictions by governments and increased perceived risks of the disease, therehave been significant changes in social activities and travel patterns. This paper investigates the effects of COVID-19 on changes toindividuals’ travel patterns, particularly for travel purposes. An online questionnaire survey was conducted in China, which incorporatesquestions about individuals’ sociodemographic and travel characteristics in three different periods of COVID-19 (i.e. before theoutbreak, at the peak and after the peak;the peak here refers to the peak of the pandemic in China, between the end of January and1 May, 2020). The results show that trip frequency decreased sharply from the outbreak until the peak, and drastically increased afterthe peak. Nevertheless, the data fromthis study suggests that it has not fully recovered to the level before the outbreak. Subsequently,a series of random parameters bivariate Probit models for changes in travel patterns were estimated with personal characteristics.The findings demonstrate that during the peak of the pandemic, residents who did not live in more developed cities reached lowfrequencytravel patterns more quickly. For travel purposes, residents of Wuhan, China resumed travelling for work, entertainmentand buy necessities at a much higher rate than other cities. After the peak, students’ travel for work, entertainment and to buy necessitiesrecovered significantly faster than for other occupations. The findings would be helpful for establishing effective policies tocontrol individual travel and minimize disease spread in a possible future pandemic.

Understanding travel behavior adjustment under COVID-19

The outbreak and spreading of the COVID-19 pandemic have had a significant impact on transportation system.By analyzing the impact of the pandemic on the transportation system,the impact of the pandemic on the social economy can be reflected to a certain extent,and the effect of anti-pandemic policy implementation can also be evaluated.In addition,the analysis results are expected to provide support for policy optimization.Currently,most of the relevant studies analyze the impact of the pandemic on the overall transportation system from the macro perspective,while few studies quantitatively analyze the impact of the pandemic on individual spatiotemporal travel behavior.Based on the license plate recognition(LPR)data,this paper analyzes the spatiotemporal travel patterns of travelers in each stage of the pandemic progress,quantifies the change of travelers'spatiotemporal behaviors,and analyzes the adjustment of travelers'behaviors under the influence of the pandemic.There are three different behavior adjustment strategies under the influence of the pandemic,and the behavior adjustment is related to the individual's past travel habits.The paper quantitatively assesses the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on individual travel behavior.And the method proposed in this paper can be used to quantitatively assess the impact of any long-term emergency on individual micro travel behavior.

Use of regression trees to predict overweight trucks from historical weigh-in-motion data

The traffic of overloaded trucks is a critical problem in highways.It affects pavement performance life,reduces the service life of bridges,and has a negative impact on road safety,average speed and level of service.There are several practices to prevent the truck overloading issue,i.e.,enforcement activities to verify the truck’s compliance with the legal weight limits.This paper investigates the development of a method that uses available weigh-in-motion(WIM)data to identify overloaded truck weight and travel patterns.The proposed approach is based on regression trees method,a simple and easily understandable analytic tool used to build prediction models from a large set of data.An overall analysis of the overloaded truck regression tree model shows that the most important variable to classify and predict overloading is the truck type.Regarding the axle overloading,the most significant variable is the time of the day(most of the overloaded trucks travel at late night or early morning).The regression tree results can be used to optimize the efficiency of administration activities by planning truck enforcement operations based on the more critical scenarios.Also,the results improve the knowledge about the load characteristics of trucks,which can lead to more effective pavement management systems and more assertive pavement structure designs.

Cluster and characteristic analysis of Shanghai metro stations based on metro card and land-use data

Metro is an important form of public transport in Shanghai.Based on the metro card data,we conduct the cluster analysis of Shanghai metro stations according to the pattern of passenger flow changing with time.Then the characteristics of travel time and surrounding land use are investigated for different types of stations to explore the relationship between urban land-use characteristics and travel activities reflected by passenger flow at metro stations.It is found that the passenger flow pattern of metro stations is closely related to the location conditions of stations and its surrounding land-use patterns.Based on various characteristics,285 metro stations are classified into four types,including residential-oriented stations,employmentoriented stations,employment-residence-oriented stations,and integrated functionaloriented stations,reflecting the interaction between spontaneous travel behavior and urban land-use characteristics and providing a reference for optimizing the urban functional structure and the spatial allocation of facilities.