Planning Urban Internal Transport Based on Cell Phone Data
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors claim a novel approach to correctly compute the OD traffic matrix based on the information from the satellite images of the city, administrative map of the city, transportation planning document, and cell phone data. The testing is performed using ArchGIS. The results from many aspects are provided.
1. It is not clear that how the information from satellite images of the city, administrative map of the city, transportation planning document, and cell phone data are combined. What were the research challenges.
2. P-1, “Y. Fan …” >> “Fan”, the rest of paper should be checked for this.
3. P-2, “Li et al” >> “Li et al.”
4. P-2, What is Suzhou? May be a city name? please mention it which country.
5. The paper should be self-contained. For example
a. P-2, what is CDMA? Explain it here. Similarly, GPSone, what is it?
b. P-2, what is meant by data defects and positioning drift? May be these are proper term. why does the mobile phone location information have these problems?
c.
6. P-2, “Researchers at home and abroad” is not necessary
7. P-3, no link to GOD API
8. Section 1, last para, the problem is defined at very abstract level. It is already done as admitted by the authors in Section 1. It is better to explain just a few existing related approaches based on which the authors propose their approach. Then the authors should point out the problem in these approaches and how they are addressed by them.
9. No information is provided about ArchGIS and its importance.
1 Each and everything is done by software. The authors did not propose any new method.
1 No comparison with another method. So it is difficult to judge its significance.
Author Response
Point 1: It is not clear that how the information from satellite images of the city, administrative map of the city, transportation planning document, and cell phone data are combined. What were the research challenges.
Response 1: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clearly and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have added a more detailed interpretation regarding combination of the information from satellite images of the city, administrative map of the city, transportation planning document, and cell phone data are combined on the data processing section in Section 2. More detailed analysis was added as follow:
In order to carry out experimental research under the same spatial coordinate system, we first drag the city satellite image map into the ArcGIS software for coordinate projection processing, and then drag the road quantity data and mobile phone data obtained from OpenStreetMap into the ArcGIS software for the same processing. This step is to unify the coordinate processing of the three with geographic information to obtain a coincident data image. Through the geographic registration tool in ArcGIS, we re-combine the road planning map with the above images, establish a network database, and plot the urban planning road network, passenger stations, railway stations, ports, township points and other data in layers according to the planning map.
How to obtain the spatial distribution map of travel OD traffic between various townships with mobile phone data that only has a starting point, destination point and traffic number is our research challenge. The innovation of this article is to propose a simple and operable analysis process for obtaining OD information.
Point 2: P-1, “Y. Fan …” >> “Fan”, the rest of paper should be checked for this.
Response 2: Thank you for your suggestion. We have modified this expression throughout the text according to the comment.
Point 3: P-2, “Li et al” >> “Li et al.”
Response 3: We are extremely grateful to reviewer for pointing out this problem. We have added full stop behind.
Point 4: P-2, What is Suzhou? May be a city name? please mention it which country.
Response 4: We are grateful for the suggestion and have added a brief description as follows:
Li et al used taxi OD data in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China to construct an index system and analysis method for taxi travel characteristics, time and space distribution
Point 5: The paper should be self-contained. For example: a. P-2, what is CDMA? Explain it here. Similarly, GPSone, what is it? b. P-2, what is meant by data defects and positioning drift? May be these are proper term. why does the mobile phone location information have these problems?
Response 5: We agree with the comment and have added the information required as explained above in the revised manuscript. The supplemental content is presented following:
CDMA is a spread spectrum multi-access digital communication technology, which has the advantages of strong anti-interference ability, broadband transmission and anti-fading ability. GPSOne positioning technology is a system pushed out of the shortcomings of improving GPS positioning technology, compared with traditional GPS has higher accuracy, short positioning time and can achieve indoor positioning.
In the area covered by the communication network, a specific location usually will be covered by the signal overlap of several surrounding base stations. The base stations connected by mobile phones in this area will continue to change with the change of signal strength of each base station, resulting in a "ping-pong effect" phenomenon of switching between two or more base stations. In addition, in order to ensure the efficiency and quality of mobile phone user communication, service base stations often have a load optimization adjustment mechanism. When the load of the base station adjacent to the mobile phone is large, the mobile phone signal will be automatically switched to the base station that is farther away and less loaded, resulting in signal drift. At the same time, the difference in the distribution density area of the base station may cause defects in the mobile phone positioning data in some areas. These problems reduce the accuracy of the phone's data.
Point 6: P-2, “Researchers at home and abroad” is not necessary
Response 6: We agree with the comment and have Deleted "at home and abroad" in the paper.
Point 7: P-3, no link to GOD API
Response 7: Thank you for the content recommendation. The precedent version of “GOD API” has been replaced, becoming “transportation planning document”. We also have added the information about data sources as follow:
We obtain important transportation facilities data and other information by transportation planning document.
The following data are used for the study: 1. satellite images of Wuxue City, source spatial geographic data cloud platform; 2. administrative map data of Wuxue City with geographic information, source OpenStreetMap platform; 3. Wuxue City transportation planning documents, source government official website; 4. effective cell phone data for 20 days from August 10 to August 29, 2020, which is collected from the whole area of Wuxue City, source operator cooperation.
Point 8: Section 1, last para, the problem is defined at very abstract level. It is already done as admitted by the authors in Section 1. It is better to explain just a few existing related approaches based on which the authors propose their approach. Then the authors should point out the problem in these approaches and how they are addressed by them.
Response 8: Thank you for underlining this deficiency. This para in section 1 was revised and modified according to the information showed in the work suggested by the reviewer. The specific changes are as follows:
It can be seen from the above research status that many scholars have proposed methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics from mobile phone data from multiple angles, but the content lacks a specific description of the methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics. At the same time, the form of mobile phone data acquisition is constantly changing, and new processing methods are needed to analyze regional traffic links. In addition, these studies are more specific to the urban and metropolitan level of large urban centers, and there is a lack of research on small and medium-sized cities. In China, small and medium-sized cities are an important force to promote the development of the national economy, this paper selects Wuxue City as the research object to provide quantitative analysis of the development path of small and medium-sized cities in terms of transportation.
Point 9: No information is provided about ArchGIS and its importance. Each and everything is done by software. The authors did not propose any new method. No comparison with another method. So it is difficult to judge its significance.
Response 9: We deeply appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. According to the reviewer’s comment, we have provided more details to describe the ArcGIS as follows:
ArcGIS is a desktop application GIS platform that integrates spatial data display, editing, query retrieval, statistics, report generation, spatial analysis, and advanced mapping. It can comprehensively process geospatial related information and solve complex analysis problems, and has strong information processing capabilities, which is widely used in transportation network analysis and spatial layout research of transportation facilities, which reflects the high credibility of ArcGIS spatial analysis technology analysis simulation.
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract:
ok - but the last sentence should be more concrete: what new ideas?
Lines 17-18: ... the planning of the road network ...
Introduction:
Line 25: cell phones
Lines 27-28: has been conducted for multiple aspects of research ...
Line 32-33: ... yield only a small sample size and low accuracy ..
Line 62: full stop M. Huang et al. "based on ..." - move this part to the very end of the sentence for better grammar
Line 64-65: full stop In the Yangjiaping area ... the combined WHAT? with the ...
Line 70: J. Tang "based on the ... - move this part to the very end of the sentence for better grammar
Line 79: full stop Z. Hu
Line 86: and finally ...
Line 93: per unit time full stop And based on the ...
Line 100: and built a bus route planning module which calculates ...
Line 102: cost full stop M. Jia
Line 108: ... data in order to ...
Line 110: a lack of ...
Line 113: .. networks full stop We ...
Line 114: ... and we process ...
Line 115: We sort out ...
Line 117: use this network data to construct ...
Materials and Methods:
Line 134: what do you mean by "ecological" towns?
Line 143: ... which is collected ...
Line 146: ... We take the urban and rural ...
Line 147: combine this with the administrative ...
Lie 148: ... for map registration REMOVE THE COMMA HERE in order for making road planning drawings having accurate geographic information ...
Line 149. ... roads in the study area full stop All roads at all levels ...
Line 154-155: the road classification is according to their respective ...
Line 176: ... we undertake an evaluation of ...
Line 178: ... the research process is ...
Line 185: ... We analyze ...
Line 190: ... the ArcGIS management tool ...
Line 195: ... and analyze ...
Line 198: The we analyze ...
the last part of the sentence in Line 198 is unclear or incomplete - revise / rewrite
Lines 199/200: poor grammar - rewrite this
Line 206: ... the ArcGIS analysis tool ...
Line 209: "proposed by Allen" - this needs a supporting reference here
Line 2018: ... obtained by the inverse ...
Line 226: "proposed by Geertman et al. - this needs a supporting reference here
Line 223: ... results is combined ...
Results:
Line 242: ... Taking towns as units ...
Line 270: ... of each town (Figure 8) full stop Meichuan town ...
Line 297: ... that the spatial distribution ...
Line 298: ... and that the spatial distribution ...
Line 307: ... imbalanced ...
Line 307: ... we need to strengthen ...
Line 308 ... in the city remove the comma here for ...
Line 309 ... other areas where the ...
Line 310: ... we need to ...
Line 316: ... the accessibility of the urban traffic network ...
Line 318: ... to a certain extent remove the comma here it can ...
Line 322: OD matrix [to be consistent with the way you have written it all the way above in the paper]
Line 326: ... which are located ...
Line 330: ... the planning of the road network ...
Line 348: ... and we analyze the time required ...
Line 350: In constructing a service area analysis model ...
Line 354: ... calculated at which? vehicle speed, is accounting for ...
Line 355: "relatively reasonable" - compared to what?
Line 360: ... extends outwards ...
Line 262: ... but people in the city ...
Line 373: ... but the overall accessibility ...
Line 387: ... and planning ... to Wuxue Port remove the comma here to ...
Line 390-391: ... the G347 ... , the S308 ..., the S411, and the Tianzhen ... full stop The main transportation ...
Line 392: ... the G347 ..., the Mayyang, and the G220 ....
Line 393-393: The number of railway stations and ports was kept separate from this for a subsequent calculation.
Line 399: ... impedence we undertook to analyze the ... transportation networks in ...
Line 400: We calculated the ...
Line 401: and then analyzed ...
Lines 402-404 - unclear: which vessels / vehicles? clarify & rewrite
Line 414: Both the Tianzhen port area and the Wuxuhe port area ...
Line 419: ... traffic can quickly contact ...
Discussion:
Line 424: Based on the comprehensive analysis set out above, ...
Line 426-427: ... and there is traffic congestion. We suggest additional road networks are needed to strengthen ...
Line 436: ... one can upgrade the existing roads, which would shorten travel time and enhance traffic accessibility.
Line 437: One could add town railway lines ...
Line 449 replace the comma with a semi-colon according to travel OD, we suggest to increase bus service lines reasonably.
Line 450-451 - for the which ("the") town? ... with urban environment specific ...
Line 467-468: We calculate the area ..., and calculate the difference ... , and then the difference is divided by ... get the ratio of the improvement value.
Line 477: ... , and the standard deviation is ...
Line 479 ... using a natural ...
Line 487: ... spatial analysis, with the suggested modifications we ...
Line 500: ... and thus the colour ...
Conclusions:
Line 510: ... , and this can be used ...
Line 513: ... in order to analyze ...
Line 515: This research provides operable ...
Line 516: Based on regional ...
Line 518: and use the above analysis ...
Line 524-525: which specification? , this leads to ...
Line 529: ... methods as to how to obtain ...
You then need to complete the sections from Author Contribution etc.
Author Response
Point 1: Abstract: ok - but the last sentence should be more concrete: what new ideas?
Lines 17-18: ... the planning of the road network ...
Introduction:
Line 25: cell phones
Lines 27-28: has been conducted for multiple aspects of research ...
Line 32-33: ... yield only a small sample size and low accuracy ..
Line 62: full stop M. Huang et al. "based on ..." - move this part to the very end of the sentence for better grammar
Line 64-65: full stop In the Yangjiaping area ... the combined WHAT? with the ...
Line 70: J. Tang "based on the ... - move this part to the very end of the sentence for better grammar
Line 79: full stop Z. Hu
Line 86: and finally ...
Line 93: per unit time full stop And based on the ...
Line 100: and built a bus route planning module which calculates ...
Line 102: cost full stop M. Jia
Line 108: ... data in order to ...
Line 110: a lack of ...
Line 113: .. networks full stop We ...
Line 114: ... and we process ...
Line 115: We sort out ...
Line 117: use this network data to construct ...
Materials and Methods:
Line 134: what do you mean by "ecological" towns?
Line 143: ... which is collected ...
Line 146: ... We take the urban and rural ...
Line 147: combine this with the administrative ...
Lie 148: ... for map registration REMOVE THE COMMA HERE in order for making road planning drawings having accurate geographic information ...
Line 149. ... roads in the study area full stop All roads at all levels ...
Line 154-155: the road classification is according to their respective ...
Line 176: ... we undertake an evaluation of ...
Line 178: ... the research process is ...
Line 185: ... We analyze ...
Line 190: ... the ArcGIS management tool ...
Line 195: ... and analyze ...
Line 198: The we analyze ...
the last part of the sentence in Line 198 is unclear or incomplete - revise / rewrite
Lines 199/200: poor grammar - rewrite this
Line 206: ... the ArcGIS analysis tool ...
Line 209: "proposed by Allen" - this needs a supporting reference here
Line 2018: ... obtained by the inverse ...
Line 226: "proposed by Geertman et al. - this needs a supporting reference here
Line 223: ... results is combined ...
Results:
Line 242: ... Taking towns as units ...
Line 270: ... of each town (Figure 8) full stop Meichuan town ...
Line 297: ... that the spatial distribution ...
Line 298: ... and that the spatial distribution ...
Line 307: ... imbalanced ...
Line 307: ... we need to strengthen ...
Line 308 ... in the city remove the comma here for ...
Line 309 ... other areas where the ...
Line 310: ... we need to ...
Line 316: ... the accessibility of the urban traffic network ...
Line 318: ... to a certain extent remove the comma here it can ...
Line 322: OD matrix [to be consistent with the way you have written it all the way above in the paper]
Line 326: ... which are located ...
Line 330: ... the planning of the road network ...
Line 348: ... and we analyze the time required ...
Line 350: In constructing a service area analysis model ...
Line 354: ... calculated at which? vehicle speed, is accounting for ...
Line 355: "relatively reasonable" - compared to what?
Line 360: ... extends outwards ...
Line 262: ... but people in the city ...
Line 373: ... but the overall accessibility ...
Line 387: ... and planning ... to Wuxue Port remove the comma here to ...
Line 390-391: ... the G347 ... , the S308 ..., the S411, and the Tianzhen ... full stop The main transportation ...
Line 392: ... the G347 ..., the Mayyang, and the G220 ....
Line 393-393: The number of railway stations and ports was kept separate from this for a subsequent calculation.
Line 399: ... impedence we undertook to analyze the ... transportation networks in ...
Line 400: We calculated the ...
Line 401: and then analyzed ...
Lines 402-404 - unclear: which vessels / vehicles? clarify & rewrite
Line 414: Both the Tianzhen port area and the Wuxuhe port area ...
Line 419: ... traffic can quickly contact ...
Discussion:
Line 424: Based on the comprehensive analysis set out above, ...
Line 426-427: ... and there is traffic congestion. We suggest additional road networks are needed to strengthen ...
Line 436: ... one can upgrade the existing roads, which would shorten travel time and enhance traffic accessibility.
Line 437: One could add town railway lines ...
Line 449 replace the comma with a semi-colon according to travel OD, we suggest to increase bus service lines reasonably.
Line 450-451 - for the which ("the") town? ... with urban environment specific ...
Line 467-468: We calculate the area ..., and calculate the difference ... , and then the difference is divided by ... get the ratio of the improvement value.
Line 477: ... , and the standard deviation is ...
Line 479 ... using a natural ...
Line 487: ... spatial analysis, with the suggested modifications we ...
Line 500: ... and thus the colour ...
Conclusions:
Line 510: ... , and this can be used ...
Line 513: ... in order to analyze ...
Line 515: This research provides operable ...
Line 516: Based on regional ...
Line 518: and use the above analysis ...
Line 524-525: which specification? , this leads to ...
Line 529: ... methods as to how to obtain ...
You then need to complete the sections from Author Contribution etc.
Response 1: Thank you for your precious comments and advice. Those comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have revised the manuscript accordingly，and our point-by-point responses are presented above. For two missing reference citations, we have dded a supporting reference. According to the reviewer’s comments on the addition of content , we have provided more details to describe the new idea and the specification town and the speed of the vehicles as the following:
The research provides a new way to get spatio-temporal information about passenger flows by the application of cell phone data to urban road planning.
In addition, Meichuan and Huaqiao town with the larger contact with Wuxue district.
Its analysis uses the speed of the vehicles on different grades of roads refer to the road design specification.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.docx
Reviewer 3 Report
The mentioned manuscript is quite interesting, as it contains several useful and progressive scientific outputs, including a practical application. The contribution is processed in a relatively high quality, but I recommend incorporating the following comments:
1. It would be appropriate to expand the introduction. It is necessary to mention why the given issue is so important and which advantages and benefits it will have for the society.
2. I recommend to move chapter 3 (Test methods) to chapter 2, because that chapter should be focused on methods.
3. The Test method should be better explained and described and other alternative methods should be also mentioned in the second chapter in my view.
4. I recommend to check the English language throughout the article and to correct the minor mistakes.
Author Response
Point 1: It would be appropriate to expand the introduction. It is necessary to mention why the given issue is so important and which advantages and benefits it will have for the society.
Response 1: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clear and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have added a brief description as follows:
It can be seen from the above research status that many scholars have proposed methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics from mobile phone data from multiple angles, but the content lacks a specific description of the methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics. At the same time, the form of mobile phone data acquisition is constantly changing, and new processing methods are needed to analyze regional traffic links. In addition, these studies are more specific to the urban and metropolitan level of large urban centers, and there is a lack of research on small and medium-sized cities. In China, small and medium-sized cities are an important force to promote the development of the national economy, this paper selects Wuxue City as the research object to provide quantitative analysis of the development path of small and medium-sized cities in terms of transportation.
Point 2: I recommend to move chapter 3 (Test methods) to chapter 2, because that chapter should be focused on methods.
Response 2: We agree with the comment and have moved chapter 3 (Test methods) to chapter 3.3 in the revised manuscript.
Point 3: The Test method should be better explained and described and other alternative methods should be also mentioned in the second chapter in my view.
Response 3: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clearly and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have added a more detailed interpretation regarding test method and other alternative methods. More detailed analysis was added in chapter 3.
A description of the basic research data alternative method added in chapter 3.2 (data processing) as follow:
In order to carry out experimental research under the same spatial coordinate system, we first drag the city satellite image map into the ArcGIS software for coordinate projection processing, and then drag the road quantity data and mobile phone data obtained from OpenStreetMap into the ArcGIS software for the same processing. This step is to unify the coordinate processing of the three with geographic information to obtain a coincident data image. Through the geographic registration tool in ArcGIS, we re-combine the road planning map with the above images, establish a network database, and plot the urban planning road network, passenger stations, railway stations, ports, township points and other data in layers according to the planning map.
A description of the cell phone date analytical methods in chapter 2.3 (Test method) as follow:
First, spatial analysis of cell phone data. The cell phone data used in this study contains the geographical coordinates of the start and end points and the amount of traffic each day. We analyze people’s travel directions, which can be used to guide traffic planning [27]. Based on the information of cell phone data and the principle of operability, this paper proposes the following analysis process to mine regional traffic contact intensity information. We first project the start and end points into the built study model. According to the direction from the starting point to the destination point, we take the average of the twenty-day flow as the daily OD flow. We connect the start and end points through the data management tool, and here is the output of all travel OD lines. We symbolically display the corresponding number of traffic, and the linear line corresponds to the travel volume from small to large from small to large, so as to obtain the spatial distribution of passenger flow. Then we use the location selection tool, number the cell phone data base stations of different towns, count the travel volume from each town to other towns, sort out the traffic trip table with the town as the statistical unit, and get the OD contact of the towns and streets in Wuxue City, and analyse the main directions of outbound travel in each township, as well as the characteristics of the city’s internal connections, for the part of the comprehensive analysis of the planned road network.
Point 4: I recommend to check the English language throughout the article and to correct the minor mistakes.
Response 4: We apologize for the language problems in the original manuscript. We have carefully revised the language issue again based on the latest file uploaded on July 5th and hope it can meet the journal’s standard.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Reviewer 4 Report
My concerns are as follows.
- The article requires extensive proofreading.
- The introduction section is too long; it is recommended to divide it into two sections: Introduction and background and related works.
- Authors should introduce a comparison table in the related works section to better introduce the novelty of the work.
- The main contributions of the work should be listed at the end of the Introduction section.
Author Response
Point 1: The article requires extensive proofreading.
Response 1: We apologize for the language problems in the original manuscript. We have carefully revised the language issue again based on the latest file uploaded on July 5th and hope it can meet the journal’s standard.
Point 2: The introduction section is too long; it is recommended to divide it into two sections: Introduction and background and related works.
Response 2: We agree with the comment and have made adjustments to the content of the first part of the article.
Point 3: Authors should introduce a comparison table in the related works section to better introduce the novelty of the work.
Response 3: We deeply appreciate the reviewer’s suggestion. According to the reviewer’s comment, we have added a comparison table and provided more details to introduce the novelty of the work as follows:
It can be seen from the above research status that many scholars have proposed methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics from mobile phone data from multiple angles, but the content lacks a specific description of the methods for obtaining traffic travel characteristics (Table 1). At the same time, the form of mobile phone data acquisition is constantly changing, and new processing methods are needed to analyze regional traffic links. In addition, these studies are more specific to the urban and metropolitan level of large urban centers, and there is a lack of research on small and medium-sized cities. In China, small and medium-sized cities are an important force to promote the development of the national economy, this paper selects Wuxue City as the research object to provide quantitative analysis of the development path of small and medium-sized cities in terms of transportation.
Table 1. Study comparison.
|
Research focus |
Comparison of research |
|
|
Existing research |
This article research |
|
|
Data acquisition information |
Focus on describing the mining methods of cell phone data and the methods of reducing the problems of mobile phone data and strengthening the accuracy of mobile phone data [9,16-22]. |
Based on previous research, this paper focuses on the method description of how to obtain traffic flow characteristic information from mobile phone information. |
|
Research subjects |
It is mainly based on large urban areas, there is a lack of research on transportation in small and medium-sized cities [10-15,20,29]. |
This article focuses on most small and medium-sized cities to promote the economic development of small and medium-sized cities, thereby driving the national economic development. |
|
Research aspect |
Focus on the application of mobile phone data to study urban public transportation, and there are fewer comprehensive studies on other modes of urban transportation [23-26]. |
This paper not only focuses on urban public transportation, but also pays attention to urban roads, railways and water transportation, and applies cell phone data to study the planning of urban comprehensive transportation. |
Point 4: The main contributions of the work should be listed at the end of the Introduction section.
Response 4: We are grateful for the suggestion. To be more clear and in accordance with the reviewer concerns, we have added a brief description about the main contributions of the work at the end of the Introduction section as follows：
The results of the OD study on residential mobility can provide help and reference for local governments in urban transportation planning and resident travel planning. At the same time, we hope that our planning proposals can provide reference and guidance for transportation planning in Wuxue City and other similar small and medium-sized cities.
Author Response File: Author Response.docx
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Ok to me
Reviewer 4 Report
All comments have been addressed; I have no more comments.
