Two weeks ago on the BBC, there was an article about a study that was published by the journal Nature that tracked the movements of 100,000 mobile phone users in an undisclosed industrialized country outside the United States. Researchers used cellular towers to track individuals’ locations whenever they received or made phone calls or text messages over six months.
The results indicated that the vast majority of people rarely traveled long distances, most people rarely traveling beyond several miles of a central point. People’s movements appear to follow a power law (or scale invariance).
The study established that nearly half of cellular users usually kept to a circle slightly more than six miles wide, while 83% of the people stayed within a 37-mile wide ring. Only 3% of the population regularly travels beyond a 200-mile wide circle, whereas less than 1% travels often beyond a 620-mile buffer.
Reading about this study provided me inspiration to better analyze the data I’ve collected from my GPS for the past 6+ months.
When examining my data points, the results indicate that over 25% of my data points occur within a mile from my primary residence. Additionally, roughly 65% of my GPS points fall within 3 miles of home. Some of this pattern is because I currently live in a dense, walkable part of DC; the distance between home and work less than 3 miles.
Here are the results in tabular form:
As GPS becomes more integrated into mobile phones, density maps will be effortlessly available to consumers. Furthermore, as location-based services continue to evolve, analysis of travel patterns on a massive scale will improve transportation design and allow for better containment of infectious disease.
Tags: BBC · GPS · location based servicesNo Comments
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet.