A hybrid population distribution prediction approach integrating LSTM and CA models with micro-spatiotemporal granularity: A case study of Chongming district, Shanghai

Studying population prediction under micro-spatiotemporal granularity is of great significance for modern and refined urban traffic management and emergency response to disasters. Existing population studies are mostly based on census and statistical yearbook data due to the limitation of data collecting methods. However, with the advent of techniques in this information age, new emerging data sources with fine granularity and large sample sizes have provided rich materials and unique venues for population research. This article presents a new population prediction model with micro-spatiotemporal granularity based on the long short-term memory (LSTM) and cellular automata (CA) models. We aim at designing a hybrid data-driven model with good adaptability and scalability, which can be used in more refined population prediction. We not only try to integrate these two models, aiming to fully mine the spatiotemporal characteristics, but also propose a method that fuses multi-source geographic data. We tested its functionality using the data from Chongming District, Shanghai, China. The results demonstrated that, among all scenarios, the model trained by three consecutive days (ordinary dates), with the granularity of one hour, incorporated with road networks, achieves the best performance (0.905 as the mean absolute error) and generalization capability.