Extracting commuting patterns in railway networks through matrix decompositions

Abstract

With the rise in the population of the world's cities, understanding the dynamics of commuters' transportation patterns has become crucial in the planning and management of urban facilities and services. In this study, we analyze how commuter patterns change during different time instances such as between weekdays and weekends. To this end, we propose two data mining techniques, namely Common Orthogonal Basis Extraction (COBE), and Joint and Individual Variation Explained (JIVE) for Integrated Analysis of Multiple Data Types and apply them to smart card data available for passengers in Singapore. We also discuss the issues of model selection and interpretability of these methods. The joint and individual patterns can help transportation companies optimize their resources in light of changes in commuter mobility behavior.