arXiv subjects

Itzhak Benenson

Publications and source records attributed to Itzhak Benenson.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2022

Estimating the potential shift from conventional public transport to flexible services based on smartcard transactions

We assume that urban travelers may prefer flexible modes of transportation over conventional public transport (PT) for making non-routine trips, and estimate the potential for such modal switch based on a database of 63 million smartcard records of PT boardings made in Israel during June 2019. The behavioral patterns of PT users are revealed by clustering their boarding records based on the location of the boarding stops and time of day, applying an extended DBSCAN algorithm. Our major findings are that (1) conventional home-work-home commuters are a minority and constitute less than 15% of the riders; (2) at least 30% of the PT trips do not belong to any cluster and can be classified as occasional; (3) The vast majority of users make both recurrent and occasional trips. A linear regression model provides a good estimate (R2 = 0.85) of the number of occasional boardings at a stop as a function of the total number of boardings, time of day, and land use composition around the location of trip origin. We conclude that the conventional PT may lose substantial urban ridership to the future flexible modes.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2022

The nature of the on-street parking search

Parking occupancy in the area is defined by three major parameters - the rate of cars arrivals, the dwell time of already parked cars, and the willingness of drivers who are searching but yet did not find a vacant parking spot, to continue their search. We investigate a series of theoretical and numeric models, deterministic and stochastic, that describe parking dynamics in the area as dependent on these parameters, over the entire spectrum of the demand to supply ratio, focusing on the case when the demand is close to or above the supply. We demonstrate that a simple deterministic model provides a good analytical approximation for the major characteristics of the parking system - the average fraction of cars among the arriving that will find parking in the area, the average number of cars that cruise for parking, and average cruising time. Stochastic models make it possible to estimate the distributions of these characteristics as well as the parameters that are related to the variance of these distributions, like the fraction of the arriving cars that find parking in less than t minutes.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2021

The fallacy of the closest antenna: Towards an adequate view of device location in the mobile network

The partition of the Mobile Phone Network (MPN) service area into the cell towers' Voronoi polygons (VP) may serve as a coordinate system for representing the location of the mobile phone devices. This view is shared by numerous papers that exploit mobile phone data for studying human spatial mobility. We investigate the credibility of this view by comparing volunteers' locational data of two kinds: (1) Cell towers' that served volunteers' connections and (2) The GPS tracks of the users at the time of connection. In more than 60\% of connections, user's mobile device was found outside the VP of the cell tower that served for the connection. We demonstrate that the area of possible device's location is many times larger than the area of the cell tower's VP. To comprise 90\% of the possible locations of the devices that may be connected to the cell tower one has to consider the tower's VP together with the two rings of the VPs adjacent to the tower's VPs. An additional, third, ring of the adjacent VPs is necessary to comprise 95\% of possible locations of the devices that can be connected to a cell tower. The revealed location uncertainty is in the nature of the MPN structure and service and entail essential overlap between the cell towers' service areas. We discuss the far-reaching consequences of this uncertainty in regards to the estimating of locational privacy and urban mobility. Our results undermine today's dominant opinion that an adversary, who obtains the access to the database of the Call Detail Records maintained by the MPN operator, can identify a mobile device without knowing its number based on a very short sequence of time-stamped field observations of the user's connection.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2020

Bayesian estimate of position in mobile phone network

The traditional approach to mobile phone positioning is based on the assumption that the geographical location of a cell tower recorded in a call details record (CDR) is a proxy for a device's location. A Voronoi tessellation is then constructed based on the entire network of cell towers and this tessellation is considered as a coordinate system, with the device located in a Voronoi polygon of a cell tower that is recorded in the CDR. If Voronoi-based positioning is correct, the uniqueness of the device trajectory is very high, and the device can be identified based on 3-4 of its recorded locations. We propose and investigate a probabilistic approach to device positioning that is based on knowledge of each antennas' parameters and number of connections, as dependent on the distance to the antenna. The critical difference between the Voronoi-based and the real world layout is in the essential overlap of the antennas' service areas: the device that is located in a cell tower's polygon can be served by a more distant antenna that is chosen by the network system to balance the network load. This overlap is too significant to be ignored. Combining data on the distance distribution of the number of connections available for each antenna in the network, we succeed in resolving the overlap problem by applying Bayesian inference and construct a realistic distribution of the device location. Probabilistic device positioning demands a full revision of mobile phone data analysis, which we discuss with a focus on privacy risk estimates.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2019

Establishing and assessing adaptive parking prices in a city: Algorithms, software and examples

We propose ParkSage, a set of spatially-explicit algorithms for establishing parking prices that guarantee a predetermined occupancy rate over a city, and for evaluating the achieved reduction in parking search time. We apply ParkSage for establishing overnight parking prices that guarantee 85% occupation in the Israeli city of Bat Yam. Pricing by street links ensures high parking availability and close to zero cruising everywhere in the city, but is inconvenient for drivers. Establishing prices by the large and heterogeneous city quarters results in local mismatch between demand and supply, the emergence of areas with fully occupied on-street parking and a long search time for the drivers whose destinations are in these areas. We demonstrate that pricing by the medium sized Transportation Analysis Zones, which is easy enough for drivers to comprehend and abide by, is sufficient for eliminating cruising. The software for establishing and assessing performance parking prices is based on the standard municipal GIS layers of streets and parking lots and is available for free download from https://www.researchgame.net/profile/Nir_Fulman

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2019

Approximation of Search Times for On-street Parking Based on Supply and Demand

We propose a method for approximating the probability p(τ, n) of searching for on-street parking longer than time τ from the start of a parking search near a given destination n, based on high-resolution maps of parking demand and supply in a city. We verify the method by comparing its outcomes to the estimates obtained with an agent-based model of on-street parking search. As a practical example, we construct maps of cruising time for the Israeli city of Bat Yam, and demonstrate that despite the low overall demand-to-supply ratio of 0.65, excessive demand in the city center results in parking searches of longer than 10 minutes. We discuss the application of the proposed approach for urban planning.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2017

An algorithm and software for establishing heterogeneous parking prices

Parking prices in cities are uniform over large areas and do not reflect spatially heterogeneous parking supply and demand. Underpricing results in high parking occupancy in the subareas where the demand exceeds supply and long search for the vacant parking, whereas overpricing leads to low occupancy and hampered economic vitality. We present Nearest Pocket for Prices Algorithm (NPPA), a spatially explicit algorithm for establishing on-and off-street parking prices that guarantee a predetermined uniform level of occupation over the entire parking space. We apply NPPA for establishing heterogeneous parking prices that guarantee 90% parking occupancy in the Israeli city of Bat Yam.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2014

Combining segregation and integration: Schelling model dynamics for heterogeneous population

The Schelling model is a simple agent based model that demonstrates how individuals' relocation decisions generate residential segregation in cities. Agents belong to one of two groups and occupy cells of rectangular space. Agents react to the fraction of agents of their own group within the neighborhood around their cell. Agents stay put when this fraction is above a given tolerance threshold but seek a new location if the fraction is below the threshold. The model is well known for its tipping point behavior: an initial random (integrated) pattern remains integrated when the tolerance threshold is below 1/3 but becomes segregated when the tolerance threshold is above 1/3. In this paper, we demonstrate that the variety of the Schelling model steady patterns is richer than the segregation-integration dichotomy and contains patterns that consist of segregated patches for each of the two groups alongside patches where both groups are spatially integrated. We obtain such patterns by considering a general version of the model in which the mechanisms of agents' interactions remain the same but the tolerance threshold varies between agents of both groups. We show that the model produces patterns of mixed integration and segregation when the tolerance threshold of most agents is either below the tipping point or above 2/3. In these cases, the mixed patterns are relatively insensitive to the model's parameters.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2012

A model of the vicious cycle of a bus line

Several authors have noted that in a non-regulated environment the development of public transport service is self-adjusting: Faced with a decreasing demand, operators will tend to reduce service to cut costs, resulting in a decrease in the level-of-service, which then triggers a further drop in demand. The opposite may also occur: high demand will induce the operator to increase supply, e.g. through an increase in frequency, which results in a higher level-of-service and a subsequent increase in passenger numbers, triggering another round of service improvements. This paper adds to the literature by presenting an analytic model for analyzing these phenomena of vicious or virtuous cycles. The model formalizes passengers decisions to use a public transport service depending on waiting time and employs field data regarding passengers variation in willingness-to-wait for a public transport service. The paper investigates the dynamics of the line service and shows how the emergence of a vicious or virtuous cycle depends on total number of potential passengers and share of captive riders. It ends with a discussion of the implications of the findings for the planning of public transport services.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2009

The Third State of the Schelling Model of Residential Dynamics

The Schelling model of segregation between two groups of residential agents (Schelling 1971; Schelling 1978) reflects the most abstract view of the non-economic forces of residential migrations: be close to people of 'your own'. The model assumes that the residential agent, located in the neighborhood where the fraction of 'friends' is less than a predefined threshold value F, tries to relocate to a neighborhood for which this fraction is above F. It is well known that for the equal groups, depending on F, Schelling's residential pattern converges either to complete integration (random pattern) or segregation. We investigate Schelling model pattern dynamics as dependent on F, the ratio of the group numbers and the size of the neighborhood and demonstrate that the traditional integrate-segregate dichotomy is incomplete. In case of unequal groups, there exists the wide interval of the F-values that entails the third persistent residential pattern, in which part of the majority population segregates, while the rest remains integrated with the minority. We also demonstrate that Schelling model dynamics essentially depends on the description of agents' residential behavior. To obtain sociologically meaningful results, the agents should be satisficers, and the fraction of the agents who relocate irrespective of the neighborhood state should be non-zero.

physics.soc-ph↗