Using smartphone-GPS data to understand pedestrian-scale behavior in urban settings: A review of themes and approaches

Abstract

With the near-ubiquitous presence of smartphones among urban dwellers in many parts of the world, we are living in an age where the public can act as continuous sensors of urban spaces. As such, data collected from GPS sensors in phones are particularly suited to support understanding human spatial behaviors in cities, and their potential for societal monitoring has been much anticipated. Yet, the field is still emerging and practical steps for utilizing smartphone-GPS in human behavior research remain unclear. Over a decade after the introduction of smartphones, we review the use of GPS data collected by these devices (smartphone-GPS data) as a tool for researching human behavior in cities. Using methods and findings from 96 papers that investigate human behaviors using smartphone-GPS data, we present seven application themes that describe domains where these data have been used thus far: sports and physical activity, environmental conditions, health and wellbeing, places and movement, neighborhoods and society, tourism, and single amenity use. We also describe the methodological factors, including parameters and variables, that have shaped how researchers have used smartphone-GPS data to understand relationships between pedestrian-scale human behaviors and urban environments. Based on these findings, we make recommendations for future researchers using smartphone-GPS data to understand relationships between humans and urban environments, at the pedestrian scale.