A massive amount of information as geo-referenced data is now emerging from the digitization of contemporary cities.Urban streets networks are characterized by a fairly uniform degree distribution and a low degree range. Therefore, the analysis of the graph constructed from the topology of the urban layout does not provide significant information when studying topology-based centrality. On the other hand, we have collected geo-located data about the use of various buildings and facilities within the city. This does provide a rich source of information about the importance of various areas. Despite this, we still need to consider the influence of topology, as this determines the interaction between different areas. In this paper, we propose a new model of centrality for urban networks based on the concept of Eigenvector Centrality for urban street networks which incorporates information from both topology and data residing on the nodes. So, the centrality proposed is able to measure the influence of two factors, the topology of the network and the geo-referenced data extracted from the network and associated to the nodes. We detail how to compute the centrality measure and provide the rational behind it. Some numerical examples with small networks are performed to analyse the characteristics of the model. Finally, a detailed example of a real urban street network is discussed, taking a real set of data obtained from a fieldwork, regarding the commercial activity developed in the city.
Among social networks, Foursquare is a useful reference for identifying recommendations about local stores, restaurants, malls, or other activities in the city. In this paper, we consider the question of whether there is a relationship between the data provided by Foursquare regarding users' tastes and preferences and fieldwork carried out in cities, especially those connected with business and leisure. Murcia was chosen for case study for two reasons: its particular characteristics and the prior knowledge resulting from the fieldwork. Since users of this network establish, what may be called, a ranking of places through their recommendations, we can plot these data with the objective of displaying the characteristics and peculiarities of the network in this city. Fieldwork from the city itself gives us a set of facilities and services observed in the city, which is a physical reality. An analysis of these data using a model based on a network centrality algorithm establishes a classification or ranking of the nodes which form the urban network. We compare the data extracted from the social network with the data collected from the fieldwork, in order to establish the appropriateness in terms of understanding the activity that takes place in this city. Moreover, this comparison allows us to draw conclusions about the degree of similarity between the preferences of Foursquare users and what was obtained through the fieldwork in the city.
The Adapted PageRank Algorithm (APA) proposed by Agryzkov et al. provides us a method to establish a ranking of nodes in an urban network. We can say that it constitutes a centrality measure in urban networks, with the main characteristic that is able to consider the importance of data obtained from the urban networks in the process of computing the centrality of every node. Starting from the basic idea of this model, we modify the construction of the matrix used for the classification of the nodes in order of importance. In the APA model, the data matrix is constructed from the original idea of PageRank vector, given an equal chance to jump from one node to another, regardless of the topological distance between nodes. In the new model this idea is questioned. A new matrix with the data network is constructed so that now the data from neighbouring nodes are considered more likely than data from the nodes that are farther away. In addition, this new algorithm has the characteristic that depends on a parameter α, which allows us to decide the importance attached, in the computation of the centrality, to the topology of the network and the amount of data associated with the node. Various numerical experiments with a network of very small size are performed to test the influence of the data associated with the nodes, depending always on the choice of the parameter α. Also we check the differences between the values produced by the original APA model and the new one. Finally, these measures are applied to a real urban network, in which we perform a visual comparison of the results produced by the various measures calculated from the algorithms studied.
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