Mobile phone data as source to discover spatial activity and motion patterns

This paper discusses the application of mobile phone data for exploring the time-dependent population distribution and motion patterns, by detecting the dynamics within these changing distributions. Such pattern explorations make use of the mobile phone location information as proxy for personal location information. Activity and motion exploration of mobile phone data, achieving a rather high spatial resolution, requires a dense mobile phone network infrastructure. As urban environments are supplied with a more dense network of mobile communication transmitter stations then rural ones, urban areas are better suited for such an analysis. The contribution describes the difficulties of mobile device data extraction, the uncertainties occurring within the data sets, gives an overview of the current possibilities to make use of these data for urban planning and mobility strategies as well as for social space studies, and finally provides an short outlook about analysis and visualisation possibilities which might occur in the future.