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Human dynamics in space and time: A brief history and a view forward
Author(s) -
Yuan May
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
transactions in gis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9671
pISSN - 1361-1682
DOI - 10.1111/tgis.12473
Subject(s) - dynamics (music) , human dynamics , popularity , space (punctuation) , computer science , social dynamics , human behavior , spacetime , data science , complement (music) , key (lock) , sociology , artificial intelligence , psychology , social psychology , physics , pedagogy , biochemistry , chemistry , computer security , quantum mechanics , complementation , gene , phenotype , operating system
This article highlights the key intellectual development in human dynamics research, examines the modeling emphases in publications, and argues for research directions in need. Human dynamics research is discussed in two broad directions: spacing time and timing space, to model human activities and interactions. Time is essential to human dynamics research. Space, while often being overlooked, in complement with time is critical to understanding human dynamics because knowing where activities take place is essential to knowing how and why people act and interact. Some interactions allow remote or asynchronized participations, and others require movement to collocate individuals for participating in synchronized activities. A spacing time approach examines the temporal gaps between interactions. A timing space approach investigates the spatial pulses between interactions. Primary research in the spacing time of human dynamics established queueing theories to explain the bursts and heavy‐tailed distribution of human interactions. Although research on the timing space of human dynamics enjoys growing popularity with data from geo‐tagged social media and location‐aware social internet of things (SIoT), its publications remain mostly exploratory. This article suggests a hierarchical framework to systematically study human dynamics and relate findings to build the body of knowledge about human dynamics.