ICN: Interactive convolutional network for forecasting travel demand of shared micromobility

Accurate shared micromobility demand predictions are essential for transportation planning and management. Although deep learning methods provide robust mechanisms to tackle demand forecasting challenges, current models based on graph neural networks suffer from limited scalability and high computational cost. There is both a need and significant potential to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of existing shared micromobility demand forecasting models. To fill these research gaps, this paper proposes a deep learning model named Interactive Convolutional Network (ICN) to forecast spatiotemporal travel demand for shared micromobility. The proposed model develops a novel channel dilation method by utilizing multi-dimensional spatial information (i.e., demographics, functionality, and transportation supply) based on travel behavior knowledge for building the deep learning model. We use the convolution operation to process the dilated tensor to simultaneously capture temporal and spatial dependencies. Based on a binary-tree-structured architecture and interactive convolution, the ICN model extracts features at different temporal resolutions and then generates predictions using a fully-connected layer. We conducted two practical case studies from Chicago, IL, and Austin, TX to test the proposed model. The results show that the ICN model significantly outperforms all benchmark models. The model predictions have the potential to assist micromobility operators in developing efficient vehicle rebalancing strategies, while also providing cities with guidance on enhancing the management of their shared micromobility system.