INVESTIGATING THE RHYTHMS OF HUMAN MOVEMENTS IN GENEVA LAKE REGION USING MDC DATA

Abstract. Movement data are becoming extensive and comprehensive with the advent of GPS (global positioning system) and pervasive use of smartphones, which has led to an increasing rate of studies about movement such as mobility pattern of oil spills, taxies, storms and animals. Studying the movement of people has long been the topic of much thought and debate among researchers within the field of transportation, social issues, and policy. One of the basic prerequisites for studying human movement behavior is modeling the movement, which show how people move so that the effect of different variables can be revealed. For this purpose, this research intends to deploy the concept of activity space (i.e., the part of the space in which a person is active) and its determinants to display the trajectory of individuals, and then modeling the effect of different variables on human mobility behavior. This study explores the effect of time (movement on weekends and weekdays) and demographic (age, gender, occupation state) factors on the characteristics of human mobility pattern and analyzes the extent to which the mobility pattern of different group of people is related to time by using Swiss human movement sample dataset, called MDC. These movement characteristics can be used later in a wide range of applications, such as predictions, urban planning, and traffic forecasting.