Study: mobile reveals our travel habits

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A study published in the journal Nature, used data supplied by mobile phones to identify patterns of displacement of 100,000 people. And it would appear that we are very predictable.

The phone is a formidable tool for studying the human species. The direct and indirect data it supplies is a goldmine for sociologists, both at the individual level and collectively. A new study, published in the journal Nature, noted the displacement of 100,000 people compared to the signals emitted by their phones to base stations, mobile network, giving an indication of their geographical position.

And if this information were collected over a period of six months, the study found that three months was sufficient to identify a recurring pattern of displacement in an individual. They also highlighted that most people do not leave nearly a circle of 5 to 10 km around their home and they tend to always go back on the same site.

It thus appears that we are all generally behave the same way and that our movement, seemingly erratic, in fact follow mathematical laws for predicting partly our behaviour.

The mobile sociological tool par excellence
These rules set out could be of interest to many areas affecting the flow of people, such as the establishment of models of spread of epidemics, the establishment of scenarios in the event of natural disaster forecasting and road traffic.

The mobile phone is already evaluating the traffic situation and to identify points of congestion in some cities. It will also shortly to refine estimates of duration and choice of itinerary proposed by the NDP through a connection to the cellular network (the traffic system HD TomTom, for example).

The integration of GPS in mobile phones will develop applications for monitoring people, whether children or communities. The ubiquity of mobile phones also gives ideas on integrating various sensors to assess air quality or, as has been proposed to the USA after September 11, 2001, in order to have a network mobile sensors against dangerous substances or radioactive materials, a sort of anti-terrorist protection throughout the entire territory.

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