Modelling daily mobility using mobile data traffic at fine spatiotemporal scale

Abstract

We applied a data-driven approach that explores the usability of the NetMob 2023 dataset in modelling mobility patterns within an urban context. We combined the data with a highly suitable external source, the ENACT dataset, which provides a 1 km x 1km grid with estimates of the day and night population across Europe. We developed three sets of XGBoost models that predict the population in each 100m x 100m grid cell used in NetMob2023 based on the mobile data traffic of the 68 online services covered in the dataset, using the ENACT values as ground truth. The results suggest that the NetMob 2023 data can be useful for the estimation of the day and night population and grid cell level and can explain part of the dynamics of urban mobility.