Towards big data behavioral analysis: rethinking GPS trajectory mining approaches from geographic, semantic, and quantitative perspectives

The question regarding the actual usage of built environments is of immense importance in behavioral research. Yet traditional methods of collecting and analyzing data on movements and activities often lack needed accuracy and granularity. Thus, this article reviewed and summarized the applicability of emergent GPS trajectory mining approaches in the field of architecture from geographic, semantic, and quantitative perspectives, respectively. Accordingly, three experiments based on a case study using real GPS trajectory data from visitors to the Palace Museum in China were conducted to examine the usefulness and weakness of the aforementioned approaches. The findings revealed that although all three dimensions of the trajectory mining approaches had the potential to provide useful information for architectural and urban design, the higher the dimensionality in utilizing the data, the more effective the approach was in discovering generalizable knowledge of human behavioral pattern. Furthermore, the results suggested that to gain insights into the typological characteristics of human behaviors related to the built environments, the contribution of trajectory data alone was limited, hence, conventional field surveys and questionnaires which contain information on individual characteristics and spatial features should be used in conjunction. Future research and practical implications were outlined.