Analysis of Individual’s Activity Space Based on the Cellular Signaling Data

In the overall planning of a city, it is important to formulate the reasonable structure of urban space which needs lots of research studies as strong supports. One of these supports is the relationship between the urban built environment and human behavior, and this has been of interest to the field of urban transportation planning. The essential element in this research field is the development of appropriate measures for individual’s activity space based on the collected data. This study introduced a new dataset, the cellular signaling data (CSD), and corresponding measures to analyze the relationship between the urban built environment and individual’s activity space. The CSD have more detailed time-space stamps of individual’s activities compared with traditional surveys, questionnaires, and even call detailed record (CDR) data. The individual’s activity space is defined based on the anchor point theory. The convex polygon approach was used to describe the geometrical shape of individual’s activity space. The proposed methodology was verified with the CSD collected in Shanghai. The results show that the total number of the cellphone users investigated in this study can be categorized into three different groups with specific characteristics of activity spaces. The results may benefit for related urban agencies to implement customized policy for the purpose of transportation demand management.