Understanding individual mobility patterns from urban sensing data: A mobile phone trace example

► We explore the pros and cons of applying urban sensing data in transport research. ► We provide techniques to extract mobility information from mobile phone traces. ► We compare mobile-phone-based mobility measure to odometer-based mobility measure. ► Mobile phone traces represent a reasonable proxy for individual mobility. ► This study provides useful insights into intra-urban mobility patterns. Large-scale urban sensing data such as mobile phone traces are emerging as an important data source for urban modeling. This study represents a first step towards building a methodology whereby mobile phone data can be more usefully applied to transportation research. In this paper, we present techniques to extract useful mobility information from the mobile phone traces of millions of users to investigate individual mobility patterns within a metropolitan area. The mobile-phone-based mobility measures are compared to mobility measures computed using odometer readings from the annual safety inspections of all private vehicles in the region to check the validity of mobile phone data in characterizing individual mobility and to identify the differences between individual mobility and vehicular mobility. The empirical results can help us understand the intra-urban variation of mobility and the non-vehicular component of overall mobility. More importantly, this study suggests that mobile phone trace data represent a reasonable proxy for individual mobility and show enormous potential as an alternative and more frequently updatable data source and a compliment to the conventional travel surveys in mobility study.