Where and why there: location analytics of routine occurrences (LARO) with a case study on traffic accidents

Keywords: where and when, routing occurrences, traffic accidents, POIs
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 48

Abstract

Understanding where and when events happened provides a foundation to explore why and how the events took place and to predict their occurrences. Point events, such as traffic accidents, disease cases, and criminal activities, are common in spatial clustering or hotspot analysis. These spatiotemporal clusters or hotspots are subject to two disadvantages. First, the clusters can disappear and re-appear due to varying spatial and temporal units or be subject to the modifiable area unit problem (MAUP). Second, the clusters are fixed in space and time. So, analyses focus on clusters may overlook the correlation among clusters and the repeated point-events. Instead, this research focuses on track the timing and subsequent events, which means detecting where point events routinely occur and how site characteristics and situation dynamics at these locations may explain the routine occurrences. We develop the algorithm, location analytics of routine occurrences (LARO) to uncover locations where events occur routinely. We demonstrate the method with a case study of over 250,000 reported traffic accidents from 2010 to 2018 in Dallas, Texas, the United States of America. We assume that the locations of routine traffic accidents reflect the patterns of life in Dallas' human dynamics and use points of interest (POIs) to reckon the site characteristics and situation dynamics surrounding these locations.