Identifying spatiotemporal traffic patterns in large-scale urban road networks using a modified nonnegative matrix factorization algorithm

The identification and analysis of spatiotemporal traffic patterns in road networks constitute a crucial process for sophisticated traffic management and control. Traditional methods based on mathematical equations and statistical models can hardly be applicable to large-scale urban road networks, where traffic states exhibit high degrees of dynamics and complexity. Recently, advances in data collection and processing have provided new opportunities to effectively understand spatiotemporal traffic patterns in large-scale road networks using data-driven methods. However, limited efforts have been exerted to explore the essential structure of the networks when conducting a spatiotemporal analysis of traffic characteristics. To this end, this study proposes a modified nonnegative matrix factorization algorithm that processes high-dimensional traffic data and provides an improved representation of the global traffic state. After matrix factorization, cluster analysis is conducted based on the obtained low-dimensional representative matrices, which contain different traffic patterns and serve as the basis for exploring the temporal dynamics and spatial structure of network congestion. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are examined in a road network of Beijing, China. Results show that the methods exhibit considerable potential for identifying and interpreting the spatiotemporal traffic patterns over the entire network and provide a systematic and efficient approach for analyzing the network-level traffic state.