Findings (Apr 2024)

Classifying Location Points as Daily Activities using Simultaneously Optimized DBSCAN-TE Parameters.

  • Gregory S. Macfarlane,
  • Gillian Riches,
  • Emily K. Youngs,
  • Jared A. Nielsen

Abstract

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Location-based services data collected from mobile phones represent a potentially powerful source of travel behavior data, but transforming the location points into semantic activities – where and when activities occurred – is non-trivial. Existing algorithms to label activities require multiple parameters calibrated to a particular dataset. In this research, we apply a simulated annealing optimization procedure to identify the values of four parameters used in a density-based spatial clustering with additional noise and time entropy (DBSCAN-TE) algorithm. We develop a spatial accuracy scoring function to use in the calibration methodology and identify paths for future research.