Calculate Spatial Importance of Road Network in ArcGIS

A recent study found that Random Walk algorithm can be utilized to rank spatial importance of road networks. The basic idea is that by simulating a person's random walking in a road networks, the road segments or interactions that have been walked through many times are considered spatially important. Such spatial importance of road networks is evidenced in their close correlation to some social-economic characteristics of surrounding urban areas structured by road networks, e.g., population density, job density, or even house prices. More details can be found at this article: The Random Walk Value for Ranking Spatial Characteristics in Road Networks.

An  ArcGIS Tool has been devised to implement this Random Walk simulation. 

Four functions are provided in this ArcGIS Tool:

1. Construct graph object

   Open a road network shapefile in ArcGIS. Open Construct Graph Network tool in the ArcGIS tool box, select the road shapefile as the edge layer. The weight field can be any numerical attributes of a road network, such as width, design speed and etc. In the node layer field, select the nodes that will be included in the random walk simulation, such as bus stops. Select the X and Y coordination of the node layer, and define the output folder and network name. This tool will create a graph object.
   
   

   If you don't have specific road nodes or you want to include all the road junctions in the random walk simulation , you can create road nodes by adding a network dataset of the road shapefile in ArcGIS.

   

2. Simulate random walk

   Open the Calculate Random Walking Value tool in the ArcGIS toolbox, select the created graph in the Network File field. Define the output folder, field name, threshold of loop value, weight, and simulation method of the random walk simulation. The definitions of those parameters can be found in the The Random Walk Value for Ranking Spatial Characteristics in Road Networks.
   
   
   
   Random walk simulation may take several minutes. After the calculation is done, you can import the calculated edge and node shapefile in ArcGIS. A wlk files recording the walking paths is also created in the defined folder.
   
   
   
   

3. Visualize random walk paths

   
   You can visualize the simulated random walk paths in ArcGIS by using the Check Random Walking Paths tool. In the Check Random Walking Paths tool, select the created wlk file in step 3, define how many walking paths you want to check, and define the output folder if you want to visualize those walking paths as shapefiles.
   

4. Calculate other network measures of road networks (using Networkx)

   This tool can also calculate other network measures such as PageRank, betweenness, closeness and etc. To do that,open the Calculate PageRank Value tool in the ArcGIS toolbox, select the create network graph in the step1, and define the output folder of the network calculation. The network measures will be saved in a table in the defined folder.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

How to Extract, Visualize and Analyze Facebook and Twitter Data

LBSocial is a data mining website developed in Google App Engine that can extract, visualize and analyze social media data from Facebook and Twitter. If you have a Facebook account, you can use LBSocial to get your friends' posts on Facebook or public tweets on Twitter.

Facebook Data Collection

LBSocial utilizes Facebook API to extract Facebook data.

1. Go to www.lbsocial.net, log in with your Facebook Account. This website is an official Facebook App, and has no access to your Facebook password. You can also use our test account to explore the functions of this website:
   
   ·         Test user account: bob_nvqpewi_a@tfbnw.net
   ·         Password: 1234
   
2. Once you log in, you will see the number of places you have posted on Facebook.
   
3. You can click Collect Friends' Facebook Data button, and the website will read  statuses and photos of your Facebook friends', and extract the posts that contain location information.
4. After you finish the data collection of your Facebook friends, you can click View Collected Friends Data in Table. This will give you a list of posts from your Facebook friends, including place, time, contents and participants.
   
5. You can also view your Friends' posts interactively on a map by clicking View Collected Friends Data on Map. LBSocial uses geojson data format and leaflet to display location-based Facebook activities.
   
   
6. You can also see the social network of your Facebook friends by clicking Analyze Facebook Social Network. LBSocial uses networkx to construct and analyze social networks, and displays results with D3.
   
   
   
7. The Collect Facebook Data From An Account function can help you to collect  posts from a specific Facebook friend or a public Facebook account.

Twitter Data Collection

LBSocial  combines Twitter REST API and Twitter Search Website to harvest tweets.

1. Type the Twitter account that you want to collect in the Twitter Account Form. You can also specify the time period that you want to harvest. LBsoical will gather a list of tweet id from Twitter Search Website based on the defined query, and then extract the tweets from the tweet id list by using REST API. 
   
2. You can also collect tweets by tweet contents or by locations where tweets are published.
   
3. You can view the collected tweets in a table or on a map.
   
4. The network analysis function will analyze and visualize the interactions of twitter users based on the collected tweets.