Mobile phone data proves predictability of humans

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 5 Jun 2008 at 08:48

Researchers have used mobile phone cell-station data to study the way that people move around cities, and found that humans are indeed creatures of habit.

Data from 100,000 mobile phone users was analysed in the study, which found that most of us go to work, to school and back home in surprisingly predictable patterns, something the researchers says will be useful in city planning and preparing for emergencies.

"Despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns," says the report by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and colleagues of Northeastern University in Boston, published in the journal Nature.

"This inherent similarity in travel patterns could impact all phenomena driven by human mobility, from epidemic prevention to emergency response, urban planning and agent-based modeling," they added.

They used data collected by an unnamed European mobile phone carrier for billing and operational purposes. "It contains the date, time and coordinates of the phone tower routing the communication for each phone call and text message sent or received by 6 million customers," they wrote.