Activity-Aware Map: Identifying human daily activity pattern using mobile phone data [book chapter]

Abstract

Being able to understand dynamics of human mobility is essential for urban planning and transportation management. Besides geographic space, in this paper, we characterize mobility in a profile-based space (activity-aware map) that describes most probable activity associated with a specific area of space. This, in turn, allows us to capture the individual daily activity pattern and analyze the correlations among different people’s work area’s profile. Based on a large mobile phone data of nearly one million records of the users in the central Metro-Boston area, we find a strong correlation in daily activity patterns within the group of people who share a common work area’s profile. In addition, within the group itself, the similarity in activity patterns decreases as their work places become apart.