Open Data and Quantitative Techniques for Anthropology of Road Traffic

TL;DR

It is shown that quantitative data analysis only partially answers anthropological questions, but it can be a valuable tool for preliminary research and that quantitative discovery of small local events can help to pinpoint future fieldwork sites.

Abstract

What kind of questions about human mobility can computational analysis help answer? How to translate the findings into anthropology? We analyzed a publicly available data set of road traffic counters in Slovenia to answer these questions. The data reveals interesting information on how a nation drives, how it travels for tourism, which locations it prefers, what it does during the week and the weekend, and how its habits change during the year. We conducted the empirical analysis in two parts. First, we defined interesting traffic spots and designed computational methods to find them in a large data set. As shown in the paper, traffic counters hint at potential causes and effects in driving practices that we can interpret anthropologically. Second, we used clustering to find groups of similar traffic counters as described by their daily profiles. Clustering revealed the main features of road traffic in Slovenia. Using the two quantitative approaches, we outline the general properties of road traffic in the country and identify and explain interesting outliers. We show that quantitative data analysis only partially answers anthropological questions, but it can be a valuable tool for preliminary research. We conclude that open data are a useful component in an anthropological analysis and that quantitative discovery of small local events can help us pinpoint future fieldwork sites.

Figures (7)

• Figure 1: (a) Counter 734 connecting Rogla with Zreče. In February, the two peaks represent the returnees with the half-day skiing ticket at 1 pm and those with the full-day ticket at 4 pm. The plot shows data in one direction. The average February traffic for each direction separately is shown in Figure \ref{['fig:734-feb']}d. (b) Afternoon rush hour for counter 179. July is the month with the lowest frequency of traffic for this counter. (c) Map of counters that are referenced in the paper.
• Figure 2: (a) Average monthly traffic by year. Traffic patterns are consistent across the years, with a uniform peak in the summer. (b) Average car traffic per hour by the type of day, one line representing workdays and the other weekends. Vertical bars show standard deviation. (c) Counter 197 on the route between Vršič pass and the Trenta valley. The road is closed in the winter due to snowfall, but it is popular with summer visitors. (d) Average daily traffic for February for counter 734. The x-axis shows the hours of the day. One line shows traffic to the skiing resort, with a peak at around 8 am, while the other line shows traffic from the resort, with two peaks at 1 pm and 4 pm. Vertical bars show standard deviation.
• Figure 3: (a) Average motor traffic per month. Vertical bars show standard deviation. (b) Relative motorbike traffic. Both the color and the size of the point correspond to the percentage of yearly traffic in September. There is high traffic in the western part of the country.
• Figure 4: (a) Daily traffic profiles for counter 742 at the southern Slovenian border. (b) The color and shape of the point correspond to the type of counter (blue circle for weekends and red cross for workdays), while the size corresponds to the percentage of traffic for the specified part of the week (min. 50%, max. 70%).
• Figure 5: (a) A significant increase in traffic is evident in October when Šmartno pri Litiji with counter ID 437 holds the annual Chestnut festival. (b) A significant increase in traffic is evident in October for counter ID 333, when the Festival of Kozjansko apple takes place in the Kozjansko Regional Park. (c) Saint Stephen is a local, one-day event with a tiny increase in traffic at counter 293. Hence it was impossible to see the reason for the high score from the monthly averages. A daily line chart for December of all three years revealed the reason for the increase - 26 December, when Dolenja Stara vas hold the traditional horse blessings. The image shows car traffic for December of 2015, 2016, and 2017 for one direction.