Patent ID: 8606727

Claim:
A method for determining spatial influences among sections, comprising: determining, for each of sections in a road network, a spatial scope having influence on the section, wherein the spatial scope is of a spatial order of N, which is an integer equal to or greater than 1; extracting, from the road network, neighboring sections of the section within the determined spatial scope, as N-th order influential sections for the section; classifying the spatial relation between each of the sections and each of its N-th order influential sections into one of predefined types of spatial relation; performing, for the classified type of spatial relation, correlation analysis based on historical traffic data of the section and its N-th order influential sections of this type of spatial relation, to learn a correlation between the section and its N-th order influential sections for this type of spatial relation; and step of determining spatial influences of spatial order N for the section based on the learned correlation, wherein each of the spatial influences reflects an extent to which the section is influenced by one of its N-th order influential sections.