Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)

Background: Understanding the complex dynamics of urban environments is crucial for building smarter and more livable cities. To achieve this, it is essential to capture the interactions between physical space and human activities at finer scales. Objective: This study aims to develop a model that e...

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Main Authors: Namwoo Kim, Yoonjin Yoon
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11027114/
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author Namwoo Kim
Yoonjin Yoon
author_facet Namwoo Kim
Yoonjin Yoon
author_sort Namwoo Kim
collection DOAJ
description Background: Understanding the complex dynamics of urban environments is crucial for building smarter and more livable cities. To achieve this, it is essential to capture the interactions between physical space and human activities at finer scales. Objective: This study aims to develop a model that effectively represents urban regions by incorporating both spatial features and human activity patterns, in order to better understand and predict urban dynamics. Methods: We propose a novel urban region representation model called the Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT). HUGAT utilizes an urban-Heterogeneous Information Network (Urban-HIN) to model diverse relations among multiple urban node and edge types. It simultaneously learns multiple objectives of spatial and human activity variations through a heterogeneous graph attention network. Results: Experiments conducted on data from New York City show that HUGAT outperforms state-of-the-art models across various prediction tasks, including average personal income, poverty ratio, region popularity, and spatial clustering. The results demonstrate not only the effectiveness of HUGAT but also the importance of human movement data in capturing ever-evolving urban dynamics. Conclusion: HUGAT’s ability to utilize readily available urban data sources has the strong potential to enhance informed decisions on urban policy and public engagement by providing critical insights in a timely and cost-effective manner, without relying on direct information sourcing such as surveys.
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spelling doaj-art-93fdfbb5c5b64d638f57c7d58db1ef972025-08-20T02:35:47ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011310260210261210.1109/ACCESS.2025.357720211027114Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)Namwoo Kim0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4829-0057Yoonjin Yoon1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3550-4431Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South KoreaDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, South KoreaBackground: Understanding the complex dynamics of urban environments is crucial for building smarter and more livable cities. To achieve this, it is essential to capture the interactions between physical space and human activities at finer scales. Objective: This study aims to develop a model that effectively represents urban regions by incorporating both spatial features and human activity patterns, in order to better understand and predict urban dynamics. Methods: We propose a novel urban region representation model called the Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT). HUGAT utilizes an urban-Heterogeneous Information Network (Urban-HIN) to model diverse relations among multiple urban node and edge types. It simultaneously learns multiple objectives of spatial and human activity variations through a heterogeneous graph attention network. Results: Experiments conducted on data from New York City show that HUGAT outperforms state-of-the-art models across various prediction tasks, including average personal income, poverty ratio, region popularity, and spatial clustering. The results demonstrate not only the effectiveness of HUGAT but also the importance of human movement data in capturing ever-evolving urban dynamics. Conclusion: HUGAT’s ability to utilize readily available urban data sources has the strong potential to enhance informed decisions on urban policy and public engagement by providing critical insights in a timely and cost-effective manner, without relying on direct information sourcing such as surveys.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11027114/Urban region representation learningheterogeneous information networkurban mobilityurban dynamics
spellingShingle Namwoo Kim
Yoonjin Yoon
Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
IEEE Access
Urban region representation learning
heterogeneous information network
urban mobility
urban dynamics
title Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
title_full Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
title_fullStr Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
title_full_unstemmed Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
title_short Effective Urban Region Representation Learning Using Heterogeneous Urban Graph Attention Network (HUGAT)
title_sort effective urban region representation learning using heterogeneous urban graph attention network hugat
topic Urban region representation learning
heterogeneous information network
urban mobility
urban dynamics
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11027114/
work_keys_str_mv AT namwookim effectiveurbanregionrepresentationlearningusingheterogeneousurbangraphattentionnetworkhugat
AT yoonjinyoon effectiveurbanregionrepresentationlearningusingheterogeneousurbangraphattentionnetworkhugat