Temporal Modeling of Spatiotemporal Networks

A spatiotemporal network is a spatial network (e.g., road network) along with the corresponding time-dependent travel-time for each segment of the network. Design and analysis of policies and plans on spatiotemporal networks (e.g., for path planning with locationbased services) require realistic models that accurately represent the temporal behavior of such networks. In this paper, for the first time we propose a temporal modeling framework for spatiotemporal networks that enables 1) generating an accurate temporal model from real temporal data collected from any spatiotemporal network (so as to be able to publish the temporal model of the spatiotemporal network without having to release the real data), and 2) augmenting any given spatial network model with a corresponding realistic temporal model custom-built for the specific spatial network (in order to be able to generate a spatiotemporal network model from a solely spatial network model). We validate the accuracy of our proposed modeling framework via experiments. We also use the proposed framework to generate the temporal model of the Los Angeles County freeway network and publish it for public use.