A statistical framework for measuring the temporal stability of human mobility patterns

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing popularity of human mobility studies that collect GPS location data, the problem of determining the minimum required length of GPS monitoring has not been addressed in the current statistical literature. In this paper, we tackle this problem by laying out a theoretical framework for assessing the temporal stability of human mobility based on GPS location data. We define several measures of the temporal dynamics of human spatiotemporal trajectories based on the average velocity process, and on activity distributions in a spatial observation window. We demonstrate the use of our methods with data that comprise the GPS locations of 185 individuals over the course of 18 months. Our empirical results suggest that GPS monitoring should be performed over periods of time that are significantly longer than what has been previously suggested. Furthermore, we argue that GPS study designs should take into account demographic groups.

Keywords:

• Density estimation
• global positioning systems (GPS)
• human mobility
• spatiotemporal trajectories
• temporal dynamics

2010 Mathematics Subject Classifications:

• 62G07
• 62M10
• 91D25
• 62H11

Acknowledgments

Portions of the research in this paper used the MDC Database made available by Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland and owned by Nokia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work of Z.D. and A.D. was partially supported by the National Science Foundation [grant number DMS/MPS-1737746] to University of Washington. Y.C. received partial support from the National Science Foundation [grant number DMS-1810960] and National Institutes of Health [grant number U01-AG016976]. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.