June 5, 2008
Mobile phones expose human habits
The whereabouts of more than 100,000 mobile phone users have been tracked in an attempt to build a comprehensive picture of human movements. The BBC reports.
"The study concludes that humans are creatures of habit, mostly visiting the same few spots time and time again.
Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis, according to the study published in the journal Nature.
The results could be used to help prevent outbreaks of disease or forecast traffic, the scientists said.
...The new work tracked 100,000 individuals selected randomly from a sample of more than six million anonymous phone users.
Each time a participant made or received a call or text message, the location of the mobile base station relaying the data was recorded.
Information was collected for six months. But, according to the researchers, a person's pattern of movement could be seen in just three.
... Although the scale of the latest study is unprecedented,it is not the first time that mobile phone technology has been used to track people's movements.
Scientists at MIT have used mobile phones to help construct a real-time model of traffic in Rome, whilst Microsoft researchers working on Project Lachesis are examining the possibility of mining mobile data to help commuters pick the optimum route to work, for example.
Location data is increasingly used by forensic scientists to identify the movements of criminal suspects."
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/2008/06/020334.htm
