180 Park Ave - Building 103
Florham Park, NJ
Human Mobility Characterization from Cellular Network Data
Richard Becker, Ramon Caceres, Karrie Hanson, Sibren Isaacman, Ji Loh, Margaret Martonosi, James Rowland, Simon Urbanek, Alexander Varshavsky, Christopher Volinsky
Communications of the ACM,
2013.
[PDF]
[BIB]
ACM Copyright
(c) ACM, 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Communications of the ACM , Volume 56, Issue 1, 2013-01-01.
{Characterizing human mobility patterns is critical to a deeper understanding of the effects of people’s travel on society and the environment. Location data from cellular telephone networks can shed light on human movements cheaply, frequently, and on a large scale. We have developed techniques for analyzing anonymized cellphone locations to explore various aspects of human mobility, in particular for hundreds of thousands of people in each of the Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York metropolitan areas. Our results include measures of how far people travel every day, estimates of carbon footprints due to home-to-work commutes, maps of the residential areas that contribute workers to a city, and relative traffic volumes on commuting routes. We have validated the accuracy of our techniques through comparisons against ground truth provided by volunteers and against independent sources such as the US Census Bureau. Throughout our work, we have taken measures to preserve the privacy of cellphone users. This article presents an overview of our methodologies and findings.}
Human Mobility Modeling at Metropolitan Scales
Sibren Isaacman, Richard Becker, Ramon Caceres, Margaret Martonosi, James Rowland, Alexander Varshavsky, Walter Willinger
10th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys 2012),
2012.
[PDF]
[BIB]
ACM Copyright
(c) ACM, 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in [10th ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys 2012)] , 2012-06-26.
{Models of human mobility have broad applicability in fields such as mobile computing, urban planning, and ecology. This paper proposes and evaluates WHERE, a novel approach to modeling how large populations move within different metropolitan areas. WHERE takes as input spatial and temporal probability distributions drawn from empirical data, such as Call Detail Records (CDRs) from a cellular telephone network, and produces synthetic CDRs for a synthetic population. We have validated WHERE against billions of anonymous location samples for hundreds of thousands of phones in the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan areas. We found that WHERE offers significantly higher fidelity than other modeling approaches. For example, daily range of travel statistics fall within one mile of their true values, an improvement of more than 14 times over a Weighted Random Waypoint model. Our modeling techniques and synthetic CDRs can be applied to a wide range of problems while avoiding many of the privacy concerns surround- ing real CDRs.}
Route Classification using Cellular Handoff Patterns
Christopher Volinsky, Alexander Varshavsky, Richard Becker, Ji Loh, Simon Urbanek, Ramon Caceres, Karrie Hanson
13th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing,
2011.
[PDF]
[BIB]
ACM Copyright
(c) ACM, 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in 13th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing , 2011-09-01.
{Understanding utilization of city roads is important for urban planners. In this paper, we show how to use cellular hand- off patterns from cellular phone networks to identify which routes people take through a city. Specifically, this paper makes the following three contributions. First, we show that cellular handoff patterns on a given route are stable across a range of conditions and propose a way to measure stability within and between routes using a variant of Earth Mover�s Distance. Second, we present two accurate classification al- gorithms for matching cellular handoff patterns to routes: one requires test drives on the routes while the other uses signal strength data collected by high-resolution scanners. Finally, we present an application of our algorithms for mea- suring relative volumes of traffic on routes leading into and out of a specific city, and validate our methods using statis- tics published by a state transportation authority.}
Clustering Anonymized Mobile Call Detail Records to Find Usage Groups
Christopher Volinsky, Richard Becker, Ramon Caceres, Karrie Hanson, Ji Loh, Simon Urbanek, Alexander Varshavsky
1st Workshop on Pervasive Urban Applications (PURBA),
2011.
[PDF]
[BIB]
Springer Copyright
The definitive version was published in PURBA-2011. , 2011-06-12
{Understanding the mix of different types of people in a city is an important input into urban planning. In this paper we identify distinct sectors of a population by their cellular phone usage. In a study of a small suburban city in New Jersey, we use unsupervised clustering to identify the usage patterns of heavy users . We uncover 7 unique usage patterns. We interpret two of the patterns as belonging to commuters and students, and verify these interpretations with deeper analysis of temporal and spatial patterns. }
A Tale of One City: Using Cellular Network Data for Urban Planning
Richard Becker, Ramon Caceres, Karrie Hanson, Ji Loh, Simon Urbanek, Alexander Varshavsky, Christopher Volinsky
IEEE Pervasive Computing ,
2010.
[PDF]
[BIB]
IEEE Copyright
The definitive version was published in IEEE Pervasive Computing , 2010-04-01, URL: https://ecopyright.ieee.org/ECTT/login.jsp Username: SCHPCSI-2011-01-0005 Password: 1295115660850
{The rapid growth of modern cities leaves urban planners faced with numerous challenges, such as high congestion and pollution levels. Effectively solving these challenges re- quires a deep understanding of existing city dynamics. In this paper, we describe methodology to study and monitor these dynamics by using Call Detail Records (CDRs), rou- tinely collected by wireless service providers as part of run- ning their networks. Our methodology scales to an entire population, has little additional cost, and can be continually updated. This provides an unprecedented opportunity to study and monitor cities in a way that current practices are not able to do.}
Method for mapping call detail data into a database for quick retrieval,
Tue Aug 24 18:10:01 EDT 2004
The present invention relates to fast data retrieval. The present invention discloses storing call detail data into two databases. A portion of the total call detail data available is mapped into an interpreted usage event (IUE) and stored in a first database that is indexed for quick data retrieval utilizing a standard database management system. The total raw call detail data is stored in a second database that is less structured, with respect to the first database, without requiring explicit indices. IUEs are retrieved from the first database in response to queries specifying one or more of the characteristics of the desired IUEs. Call detail data stored in the second database is retrieved in response to queries specifying the characteristics from one or more of the retrieved IUEs.
Database Management System With A Multiple-Level Cache Arrangement,
Tue Jul 22 18:08:47 EDT 2003
A data management system for storing data in a multiple-level cache arrangement of a database comprises a multi-tier cache memory for initially storing all data in summary form in a secondary cache which may be the database; a processor for receiving requests for data and for moving requested data from the secondary cache to a primary cache, wherein, when subsequent requests for data are received, the primary cache is searched before the secondary cache; and for periodically synchronizing and merging all data in the primary cache back into said secondary cache to refresh said primary cache and remove stale information. The system is particularly useful for managing a telecommunications system call detail summary database in which telephone call details are collected as AMA records after the calls terminate and the AMA records are forwarded to a call detail database for storage in summary form and analysis by an external system, for example, for fraud analysis or billing purposes.
Calculation and visualization of tabular data,
Tue Feb 08 18:05:30 EST 2000
Method and apparatus for providing visualization of information contained in a data set is provided. The data set is arranged in first and second categories of data, and a selection variable and a summary variable are chosen from the second category of data. A unique value is located in the first category of data which matches each selection variable, and a statistical summary of the summary variables is computed for each located unique value in the first category of data. The resultant display is based on the computation of the statistical summary.
AT&T Fellow, 2008.
For outstanding contributions to statistical computing and data visualization.
Science & Technology Medal, 1997.
Honored for outstanding technical innovation in statistical computation and data visualization.
