Mobile phone based data in human travel behaviour studies: new insights from a longitudinal perspective

This dissertation aimed to ascertain how mobile phone based data can help the author to understand human travel behaviour. This is obtained by answering five refined research questions; the main results were introduced, and the findings were thoroughly discussed. This dissertation argues that the call detail records (CDR) of mobile phone users are a valuable addition to traditional data collection methods for revealing the spatial characteristics of human travel behaviour at the individual level, allowing people make a contribution to forming the smart cities of tomorrow at the aggregated level; the proposed methodology enables the author to capture and provide insights on human travel behaviour in the longer perspective and narrow the research gap on both the inter- and intrapersonal variability of human spatial behaviour; and the proposed methodology is suitable for providing complementary knowledge to better understand social processes and to solve problematic social phenomena in terms of population short-term mobility, transportation planning and socio-spatial segregation.