Understanding the bias of call detail records in human mobility research

被引:75
作者
Zhao, Ziliang [1 ]
Shaw, Shih-Lung [1 ,2 ]
Xu, Yang [1 ]
Lu, Feng [3 ]
Chen, Jie [3 ]
Yin, Ling [4 ]
机构
[1] Univ Tennessee, Dept Geog, 304 Burchfiel Geog Bldg, Knoxville, TN 37996 USA
[2] Wuhan Univ, State Key Lab Informat Engn Surveying Mapping & R, Wuhan 430072, Peoples R China
[3] Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Geog Sci & Nat Resources Res, State Key Lab Resources & Environm Informat Syst, Beijing, Peoples R China
[4] Chinese Acad Sci, Shenzhen Inst Adv Technol, Shenzhen, Peoples R China
基金
中国国家自然科学基金;
关键词
Mobile phone location data; call detail records; human mobility; urban dynamics; UNCERTAINTY; PATTERNS;
D O I
10.1080/13658816.2015.1137298
中图分类号
TP [自动化技术、计算机技术];
学科分类号
0812 ;
摘要
In recent years, call detail records (CDRs) have been widely used in human mobility research. Although CDRs are originally collected for billing purposes, the vast amount of digital footprints generated by calling and texting activities provide useful insights into population movement. However, can we fully trust CDRs given the uneven distribution of people's phone communication activities in space and time? In this article, we investigate this issue using a mobile phone location dataset collected from over one million subscribers in Shanghai, China. It includes CDRs (similar to 27%) plus other cellphone-related logs (e.g., tower pings, cellular handovers) generated in a workday. We extract all CDRs into a separate dataset in order to compare human mobility patterns derived from CDRs vs. from the complete dataset. From an individual perspective, the effectiveness of CDRs in estimating three frequently used mobility indicators is evaluated. We find that CDRs tend to underestimate the total travel distance and the movement entropy, while they can provide a good estimate to the radius of gyration. In addition, we observe that the level of deviation is related to the ratio of CDRs in an individual's trajectory. From a collective perspective, we compare the outcomes of these two datasets in terms of the distance decay effect and urban community detection. The major differences are closely related to the habit of mobile phone usage in space and time. We believe that the event-triggered nature of CDRs does introduce a certain degree of bias in human mobility research and we suggest that researchers use caution to interpret results derived from CDR data.
引用
收藏
页码:1738 / 1762
页数:25
相关论文
共 58 条
[1]   Using Mobile Positioning Data to Model Locations Meaningful to Users of Mobile Phones [J].
Ahas, Rein ;
Silm, Siiri ;
Jarv, Olle ;
Saluveer, Erki ;
Tiru, Margus .
JOURNAL OF URBAN TECHNOLOGY, 2010, 17 (01) :3-27
[2]  
[Anonymous], P WORKSH INT GEOSP I
[3]  
[Anonymous], 1970, PAPERS REGIONAL SCI, DOI 10.1007/BF01936872
[4]  
[Anonymous], ANN GDP MAJ CIT CHIN
[5]  
[Anonymous], TOP 50 WORLD CONT PO
[6]  
[Anonymous], 1989, ACCURACY SPATIAL DAT
[7]  
[Anonymous], LAND AR RES POP POP
[8]   Future research challenges for incorporation of uncertainty in environmental and ecological decision-making [J].
Ascough, J. C., II ;
Maier, H. R. ;
Ravalico, J. K. ;
Strudley, M. W. .
ECOLOGICAL MODELLING, 2008, 219 (3-4) :383-399
[10]   The pulse of the city [J].
Batty, Michael .
ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING B-PLANNING & DESIGN, 2010, 37 (04) :575-577