A novel multi-modal analysis model with Baidu Search Index for subway passenger flow forecasting

With the boom of big data, the Internet contains more and more personal behavior information, but it is difficult to extract effectively. A model involving multivariate processing capability must be constructed to deal with these time series with complex characteristics. In this paper, a novel hybrid model embedding Baidu Search Index is therefore proposed to implement multi-step ahead subway passenger flow forecasting. Firstly, we collect data from informative Baidu Search Index, reduce dimensionality, and screen out the powerful predictors by statistical analysis. Secondly, we extract matching common modes at similar time scales between the subway passenger flow and screened Baidu Search Index via multivariate mode decomposition being optimized by multi-objective algorithm. Furthermore, to eliminate pseudo statistical causality, we select the optimal combination of modal components between subway passenger flow and its corresponding Baidu Search Index at each time scale by an innovative multi–modal analysis strategy. Thirdly, we reconstruct the forecasting values of each selected optimal combination as the final results. The empirical results of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou show that the proposed model can significantly outperform six benchmark models in both the level and directional accuracy. So introducing Baidu Search Index creates a sound opportunity to enhance the subway passenger flow forecasting ability.