IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0124160.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mobile Phone Call Data as a Regional Socio-Economic Proxy Indicator

Author

Listed:
  • Sanja Šćepanović
  • Igor Mishkovski
  • Pan Hui
  • Jukka K Nurminen
  • Antti Ylä-Jääski

Abstract

The advent of publishing anonymized call detail records opens the door for temporal and spatial human dynamics studies. Such studies, besides being useful for creating universal models for mobility patterns, could be also used for creating new socio-economic proxy indicators that will not rely only on the local or state institutions. In this paper, from the frequency of calls at different times of the day, in different small regional units (sub-prefectures) in Côte d'Ivoire, we infer users' home and work sub-prefectures. This division of users enables us to analyze different mobility and calling patterns for the different regions. We then compare how those patterns correlate to the data from other sources, such as: news for particular events in the given period, census data, economic activity, poverty index, power plants and energy grid data. Our results show high correlation in many of the cases revealing the diversity of socio-economic insights that can be inferred using only mobile phone call data. The methods and the results may be particularly relevant to policy-makers engaged in poverty reduction initiatives as they can provide an affordable tool in the context of resource-constrained developing economies, such as Côte d'Ivoire's.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanja Šćepanović & Igor Mishkovski & Pan Hui & Jukka K Nurminen & Antti Ylä-Jääski, 2015. "Mobile Phone Call Data as a Regional Socio-Economic Proxy Indicator," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(4), pages 1-15, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0124160
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124160
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124160
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124160&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0124160?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carlo Ratti & Stanislav Sobolevsky & Francesco Calabrese & Clio Andris & Jonathan Reades & Mauro Martino & Rob Claxton & Steven H Strogatz, 2010. "Redrawing the Map of Great Britain from a Network of Human Interactions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 5(12), pages 1-6, December.
    2. Nielsen, Thomas Alexander Sick & Hovgesen, Henrik Harder, 2008. "Exploratory mapping of commuter flows in England and Wales," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 90-99.
    3. James E. Anderson, 2011. "The Gravity Model," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 133-160, September.
    4. Filippo Simini & Marta C. González & Amos Maritan & Albert-László Barabási, 2012. "A universal model for mobility and migration patterns," Nature, Nature, vol. 484(7392), pages 96-100, April.
    5. Santi Phithakkitnukoon & Zbigniew Smoreda & Patrick Olivier, 2012. "Socio-Geography of Human Mobility: A Study Using Longitudinal Mobile Phone Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-9, June.
    6. Anastasios Noulas & Salvatore Scellato & Renaud Lambiotte & Massimiliano Pontil & Cecilia Mascolo, 2012. "A Tale of Many Cities: Universal Patterns in Human Urban Mobility," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(5), pages 1-10, May.
    7. Marta C. González & César A. Hidalgo & Albert-László Barabási, 2009. "Understanding individual human mobility patterns," Nature, Nature, vol. 458(7235), pages 238-238, March.
    8. D. Brockmann & L. Hufnagel & T. Geisel, 2006. "The scaling laws of human travel," Nature, Nature, vol. 439(7075), pages 462-465, January.
    9. Albert-László Barabási, 2005. "The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics," Nature, Nature, vol. 435(7039), pages 207-211, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jian Gao & Tao Zhou, 2017. "Quantifying China's Regional Economic Complexity," Papers 1703.01292, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2017.
    2. Liu, Jin-Hu & Wang, Jun & Shao, Junming & Zhou, Tao, 2016. "Online social activity reflects economic status," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 457(C), pages 581-589.
    3. Liu, Bo & Xu, Xiao-Ke & Lü, Linyuan, 2024. "Uncovering patterns of multichannel mobile communications," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 636(C).
    4. Chen, Ya & Li, Xue & Zhang, Richong & Huang, Zi-Gang & Lai, Ying-Cheng, 2020. "Instantaneous success and influence promotion in cyberspace — how do they occur?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    5. Erlström, Andreas & Grillitsch, Markus & Hall, Ola, 2020. "The Geography of Connectivity: Trails of Mobile Phone Data," Papers in Innovation Studies 2020/6, Lund University, CIRCLE - Centre for Innovation Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Maxime Lenormand & Miguel Picornell & Oliva G Cantú-Ros & Antònia Tugores & Thomas Louail & Ricardo Herranz & Marc Barthelemy & Enrique Frías-Martínez & José J Ramasco, 2014. "Cross-Checking Different Sources of Mobility Information," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-10, August.
    2. Huang, Feihu & Qiao, Shaojie & Peng, Jian & Guo, Bing & Xiong, Xi & Han, Nan, 2019. "A movement model for air passengers based on trip purpose," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 525(C), pages 798-808.
    3. Chaogui Kang & Yu Liu & Diansheng Guo & Kun Qin, 2015. "A Generalized Radiation Model for Human Mobility: Spatial Scale, Searching Direction and Trip Constraint," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(11), pages 1-11, November.
    4. Raja Jurdak, 2013. "The Impact of Cost and Network Topology on Urban Mobility: A Study of Public Bicycle Usage in 2 U.S. Cities," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(11), pages 1-6, November.
    5. Rezapour, Shabnam & Baghaian, Atefe & Naderi, Nazanin & Sarmiento, Juan P., 2023. "Infection transmission and prevention in metropolises with heterogeneous and dynamic populations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(1), pages 113-138.
    6. Nimrod Serok & Efrat Blumenfeld-Lieberthal, 2015. "A Simulation Model for Intra-Urban Movements," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-15, July.
    7. Lin Li & Lei Yang & Haihong Zhu & Rongrong Dai, 2015. "Explorative Analysis of Wuhan Intra-Urban Human Mobility Using Social Media Check-In Data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(8), pages 1-19, August.
    8. Li, Zhenpeng & Tang, Xijin & Zhou, Haijun & Yan, Donghui, 2018. "An empirical investigation and theoretic modeling for the collective online visiting behaviors," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 503(C), pages 969-980.
    9. Wang, Wenjun & Pan, Lin & Yuan, Ning & Zhang, Sen & Liu, Dong, 2015. "A comparative analysis of intra-city human mobility by taxi," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 420(C), pages 134-147.
    10. Rafael Prieto Curiel & Luca Pappalardo & Lorenzo Gabrielli & Steven Richard Bishop, 2018. "Gravity and scaling laws of city to city migration," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-19, July.
    11. Qianqian Liu & Qun Wang, 2017. "A comparative study on uncooperative search models in survivor search and rescue," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 89(2), pages 843-857, November.
    12. Saberi, Meead & Ghamami, Mehrnaz & Gu, Yi & Shojaei, Mohammad Hossein (Sam) & Fishman, Elliot, 2018. "Understanding the impacts of a public transit disruption on bicycle sharing mobility patterns: A case of Tube strike in London," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 154-166.
    13. Zhang, Xiaohu, 2021. "Beyond expected regularity of aggregate urban mobility: A case study of ridesourcing service," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    14. He, Zhengbing, 2020. "Spatial-temporal fractal of urban agglomeration travel demand," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 549(C).
    15. Tongzheng Pu & Chongxing Huang & Jingjing Yang & Ming Huang, 2023. "Transcending Time and Space: Survey Methods, Uncertainty, and Development in Human Migration Prediction," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-23, July.
    16. Jungmin Kim & Juyong Park & Wonjae Lee, 2018. "Why do people move? Enhancing human mobility prediction using local functions based on public records and SNS data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-29, February.
    17. Chen, Ya & Li, Xue & Zhang, Richong & Huang, Zi-Gang & Lai, Ying-Cheng, 2020. "Instantaneous success and influence promotion in cyberspace — how do they occur?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 556(C).
    18. Przemyslaw A Grabowicz & José J Ramasco & Bruno Gonçalves & Víctor M Eguíluz, 2014. "Entangling Mobility and Interactions in Social Media," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(3), pages 1-12, March.
    19. Maxime Lenormand & Antònia Tugores & Pere Colet & José J Ramasco, 2014. "Tweets on the Road," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(8), pages 1-12, August.
    20. Yang, Hu & Lv, Sirui & Guo, Bao & Dai, Jianjun & Wang, Pu, 2024. "Uncovering spatiotemporal human mobility patterns in urban agglomerations: A mobility field based approach," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 637(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0124160. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.