Towards a Prediction Model for People Movements in Urban Areas

The aim of this work is to develop a new type of service for predicting and communicating urban activity. This service provides short-term predictions (hours to days), which can be used as a basis for different types of resource allocation and planning, e.g. concerning public transport, personnel, or marketing. The core of the service consists of a forecasting engine that based on a prediction model processes data on different levels of detail and from various providers. This paper explores the requirements and features of the forecast engine. We conclude that agent-based modeling seems as the most promising approach to meet these requirements. Finally, some examples of potential applications are described along with analyses of scientific and engineering issues that need to be addressed.