The goal of this post is to visualize time spent in various Seattle neighborhoods using Google location data and Python
Google Takeout is a Google service that allows users to export any personal Google data. We'll use Takeout to download our raw location history as a one-time snapshot. Since Latitude was retired, no API exists to access location history in real-time.
Download location data:
LocationHistory.json file. Working with location data in Pandas. Pandas is an incredibly powerful tool that simplifies working with complex datatypes and performing statistical analysis in the style of R. Chris Albon has great primers on using Pandas here under the "Data Wrangling" section.After completing the setup, we'll read in the LocationHistory.json file from Google Takeout and create a DataFrame.
In [1]:
from __future__ import division
from utils import *
In [2]:
with open('data/LocationHistory/2018/LocationHistory.json', 'r') as location_file:
raw = json.loads(location_file.read())
# use location_data as an abbreviation for location data
location_data = pd.DataFrame(raw['locations'])
del raw #free up some memory
# convert to typical units
location_data['latitudeE7'] = location_data['latitudeE7']/float(1e7)
location_data['longitudeE7'] = location_data['longitudeE7']/float(1e7)
# convert timestampMs to seconds
location_data['timestampMs'] = location_data['timestampMs'].map(lambda x: float(x)/1000)
location_data['datetime'] = location_data.timestampMs.map(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp)
# Rename fields based on the conversions
location_data.rename(columns={'latitudeE7':'latitude',
'longitudeE7':'longitude',
'timestampMs':'timestamp'}, inplace=True)
# Ignore locations with accuracy estimates over 1000m
location_data = location_data[location_data.accuracy < 1000]
location_data.reset_index(drop=True, inplace=True)
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print(location_data.dtypes)
location_data.describe()
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print("earliest observed date: {}".format(min(location_data["datetime"]).strftime('%m-%d-%Y')))
print("latest observed date: {}".format(max(location_data["datetime"]).strftime('%m-%d-%Y')))
earliest_obs = min(location_data["datetime"]).strftime('%m-%d-%Y')
latest_obs = max(location_data["datetime"]).strftime('%m-%d-%Y')
location_data is a Pandas DataFrame containing all your location history and related info. Shapefile is a widely-used data format for describing points, lines, and polygons. To work with shapefiles, Python gives us shapely. To read and write shapefiles, we'll use fiona.
To learn Shapely and write this blog post, I leaned heavily on this article from sensitivecities.com.
First up, you'll need to download shapefile data for the part of the world you're interested in plotting. I wanted to focus on my current home of Seattle, which like many cities provides city shapefile map data for free. It's even broken into city neighborhoods! The US Census Bureau provides a ton of national shapefiles here. Your city likely provides this kind of data too. Tom MacWright has GIS with Python, Shapely, and Fiona overview for more detail on Python mapping with these tools
Next, we'll need to import the Shapefile data we downloaded from the data.seattle.gov link above
In [5]:
shapefilename = 'data/Seattle_Neighborhoods/WGS84/Neighborhoods'
shp = fiona.open(shapefilename+'.shp')
coords = shp.bounds
shp.close()
width, height = coords[2] - coords[0], coords[3] - coords[1]
extra = 0.01
In [6]:
m = Basemap(
projection='tmerc', ellps='WGS84',
lon_0=np.mean([coords[0], coords[2]]),
lat_0=np.mean([coords[1], coords[3]]),
llcrnrlon=coords[0] - extra * width,
llcrnrlat=coords[1] - (extra * height),
urcrnrlon=coords[2] + extra * width,
urcrnrlat=coords[3] + (extra * height),
resolution='i', suppress_ticks=True)
_out = m.readshapefile(shapefilename, name='seattle', drawbounds=False, color='none', zorder=2)
In [7]:
# set up a map dataframe
df_map = pd.DataFrame({
'poly': [Polygon(hood_points) for hood_points in m.seattle],
'name': [hood['S_HOOD'] for hood in m.seattle_info]
})
# Convert our latitude and longitude into Basemap cartesian map coordinates
mapped_points = [Point(m(mapped_x, mapped_y)) for mapped_x, mapped_y in zip(location_data['longitude'],
location_data['latitude'])]
all_points = MultiPoint(mapped_points)
# Use prep to optimize polygons for faster computation
hood_polygons = (MultiPolygon(list(df_map['poly'].values)))
prepared_polygons = prep(hood_polygons)
# Filter out the points that do not fall within the map we're making
city_points_filter = filter(prepared_polygons.contains, all_points)
city_points_list = list(city_points_filter)
In [8]:
hood_polygons
Out[8]:
In [9]:
df_map.tail()
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In [10]:
print("total data points in this period: {}".format(len(all_points)))
print("total data points in the city shape file for this period: {}".format(len(city_points_list)))
percentage_in_city = round(len(city_points_list)/len(all_points),2)*100
print("{}% of points this period are in the city shape file".format(percentage_in_city))
Now, city_points contains a list of all points that fall within the map and hood_polygons is a collection of polygons representing, in my case, each neighborhood in Seattle.
The raw data for my choropleth should be "number of points in each neighborhood." With Pandas, again, it's easy. (Warning - depending on the size of the city_points array, this could take a few minutes.)
In [11]:
df_map['hood_count'] = df_map['poly'].map(lambda x: num_of_contained_points(x, city_points_list))
df_map['hood_hours'] = df_map.hood_count/60.0
In [12]:
df_map.sort_values(['hood_count'], ascending=[0]).head()
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In [13]:
udistrict_points = round(len(list(filter((df_map['poly'][41]).contains, city_points_list)))/len(city_points_list),2)*100
print("{}% of points this in the city shape file are from the {}".format(udistrict_points, df_map['name'][41]))
So now, df_map.hood_count contains a count of the number of GPS points located within each neighborhood. But what do those counts really mean? It's not very meaningful knowing that I spent any n "counts" in a neighborhood, except to compare neighborhood counts against each other. And we could do that. Or we could convert hood_count into time
Turns out, converting counts into time is straightforward. From investigating the location history, it seems that unless the phone is off or without reception, Android reports you location exactly every 60 seconds. Not usually 60 seconds, not sometimes 74 seconds, every 60 seconds. It's been true on Android 4.2+. Hopefully that means it holds true for you, too. So if we make the assumption that my phone is on 24/7 (true) and I have city-wide cellular reception (also true), then all we need to do is hood_count/60.0, as shown above, and now we've converted counts to hours.
In [14]:
if not os.path.exists('output/seattle_plots'):
os.makedirs('output/seattle_plots')
hexbin_file = 'seattle_hexbin'
choropleth_file = 'seattle_choropleth'
In [15]:
#%run choropleth.py
In [16]:
# Check out the full post at http://beneathdata.com/how-to/visualizing-my-location-history/
# for more information on the code below
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(6,8))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, axisbg='w', frame_on=False)
breaks = Natural_Breaks(
df_map[df_map['hood_hours'].notnull()].hood_hours.values,
initial=300,
k=5)
# the notnull method lets us match indices when joining
jb = pd.DataFrame({'jenks_bins': breaks.yb}, index=df_map[df_map['hood_hours'].notnull()].index)
df_map['jenks_bins'] = jb
df_map.jenks_bins.fillna(-1, inplace=True)
jenks_labels = ['Never been here', "> 0 hours"]+["> %d hours"%(perc) for perc in breaks.bins[:-1]]
cmap = plt.get_cmap('Blues')
# draw neighborhoods with grey outlines
df_map['patches'] = df_map['poly'].map(lambda x: PolygonPatch(x, ec='#111111', lw=.8, alpha=1., zorder=4))
pc = PatchCollection(df_map['patches'], match_original=True)
# apply our custom color values onto the patch collection
cmap_list = [cmap(val) for val in (df_map.jenks_bins.values - df_map.jenks_bins.values.min())/(
df_map.jenks_bins.values.max()-float(df_map.jenks_bins.values.min()))]
pc.set_facecolor(cmap_list)
ax.add_collection(pc)
# Draw a map scale
m.drawmapscale(coords[0] + 0.12, coords[1],
coords[0], coords[1], 4., units='mi',
barstyle='fancy', labelstyle='simple',
fillcolor1='w', fillcolor2='#000000', fontcolor='#555555',
fontsize=6, zorder=5, ax=ax)
# ncolors+1 because we're using a "zero-th" color
cbar = custom_colorbar(cmap, ncolors=len(jenks_labels)+1, labels=jenks_labels, shrink=0.5)
cbar.ax.tick_params(labelsize=16)
current_date = time.strftime("printed: %a, %d %b %Y", time.localtime())
ax.set_title("Time Spent in Seattle Neighborhoods",
fontsize=14, y=1)
ax.text(1.62, -.12, "kivanpolimis.com", color='#555555', fontsize=15, ha='right', transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(1.62, -.15, "Collected from {} to {} on Android".format(earliest_obs, latest_obs),
fontsize=12, ha='right', transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(1.62, -.21, "Geographic data provided by data.seattle.gov \n {}".format(current_date),
ha='right', color='#555555', style='italic', transform=ax.transAxes)
plt.savefig('output/seattle_plots/{}.png'.format(choropleth_file), dpi=100,
frameon=False, bbox_inches='tight', pad_inches=0.5, facecolor='#F2F2F2')
In [17]:
Image("output/seattle_plots/{}.png".format(choropleth_file))
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We can also take a different approach to choropleths, and instead of using each neighborhood polygon as a bin, let Basemap generate uniform hexagonal bins for us. Hexbin maps are great way to visualize point density because all bins are equally sized. Best of all, it requires essentially no extra work as we've already defined our neighborhood Patches and paired down our location data. The code for creating this hexbin map below is in hexbin.py
In [18]:
#%run hexbin.py
In [19]:
"""PLOT A HEXBIN MAP OF A LOCATION
"""
fig = plt.figure(figsize=(6,8))
ax = fig.add_subplot(111, axisbg='w', frame_on=False)
# draw neighborhood patches from polygons
df_map['patches'] = df_map['poly'].map(lambda x: PolygonPatch(
x, fc='#555555', ec='#555555', lw=1, alpha=1, zorder=0))
# plot neighborhoods by adding the PatchCollection to the axes instance
ax.add_collection(PatchCollection(df_map['patches'].values, match_original=True))
# the mincnt argument only shows cells with a value >= 1
# The number of hexbins you want in the x-direction
numhexbins = 50
hx = m.hexbin(
np.array([geom.x for geom in city_points_list]),
np.array([geom.y for geom in city_points_list]),
gridsize=(numhexbins, int(numhexbins*height/width)), #critical to get regular hexagon, must stretch to map dimensions
bins='log', mincnt=1, edgecolor='none', alpha=1.,
cmap=plt.get_cmap('Blues'))
# Draw the patches again, but this time just their borders (to achieve borders over the hexbins)
df_map['patches'] = df_map['poly'].map(lambda x: PolygonPatch(
x, fc='none', ec='#FFFF99', lw=1, alpha=1, zorder=1))
ax.add_collection(PatchCollection(df_map['patches'].values, match_original=True))
# Draw a map scale
m.drawmapscale(coords[0] + 0.12, coords[1],
coords[0], coords[1], 4.,
units='mi', barstyle='fancy', labelstyle='simple',
fillcolor1='w', fillcolor2='#555555', fontcolor='#555555',
fontsize=6, zorder=5, ax=ax)
ax.set_title("Time Spent in Seattle Neighborhoods",
fontsize=14, y=1)
ax.text(1.26, -.12, "kivanpolimis.com", color='#555555', fontsize=15, ha='right', transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(1.26, -.15, "Collected from {} to {} on Android".format(earliest_obs, latest_obs),
fontsize=12, ha='right', transform=ax.transAxes)
ax.text(1.26, -.21, "Geographic data provided by data.seattle.gov \n {}".format(current_date),
ha='right', color='#555555', style='italic', transform=ax.transAxes)
plt.savefig('output/seattle_plots/{}.png'.format(hexbin_file), dpi=100, frameon=False,
bbox_inches='tight', pad_inches=0.5, facecolor='#DEDEDE')
In [20]:
Image("output/seattle_plots/{}.png".format(hexbin_file))
Out[20]:
In [21]:
print("System and module version information: \n")
print('Python version: \n {} \n'.format(sys.version_info))
print("last updated: {}".format(time.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M", time.localtime())))