Enriching the transport model of the Rotterdam region by cell phone data

Abstract

Mobile phone data are a new, unprecedented rich source to infer all kinds of mobility related information. The possibilities of mobile data are tremendous, i.e.: crowd images, frequencies of visits, foreign visitors, origin maps, traffic flows and OD-matrices can be generated locally, regionally and nationally and 24/7. The application fields are much broader than just traffic and transport: retail, city marketing, events and festivals, tourism, economy and security (crowd control) are other disciplines in which these mobility related data can generate new insights. Mobile phone data are helpful and cost effective in monitoring, evaluation, planning and policy-making [1]. In this paper we present an approach where mobile phone data is used for enriching the transport model of the region of Rotterdam. We obtained data from one of the 3 mobile phone providers in the Netherlands at which between 30% and 40% of the Dutch mobile phone usage is facilitated. This means, by accessing these data we have travel information of about one third of the total Dutch population. No other data source is known that gives travel information at a national scale at this high level. The raw data is processed into basic information which is subsequently translated into OD-information (Origin-Destination), where a destination is defined when a mobile device is longer than 30 minutes at a certain location.