Exploring strengths and weaknesses of mobility inference from mobile phone data vs. travel surveys

Abstract

Origin–destination (OD) matrices serve as a basis for travel demand modelling. Traditionally, they are derived from travel surveys that collect detailed trip information but with several shortcomings. Mobile phones are regarded as a useful source of information on people’s daily mobility. This work explores the use of mobile data in the context of mobility studies by comparing matrices derived from both types of sources over the same region. The results reveal many common features in the trip information. Moreover, although the use of mobile technology may raise questions for short trips, the huge representativeness of this technology captures the mobility in OD connections extensively regardless the area. This is crucial for non-populated areas (e.g. industrial parks or educational campuses), which constitute important mobility hotspots. Based on these findings, an applicable data fusion approach to obtain the optimum accuracy from these heterogeneous sources is presented and applied