Mobile phone data in studying urban rhythms: Towards an analytical framework

Abstract

Mobile phone data are considered one of the most promising information sources for monitoring and measuring the spatio-temporal activities of the population. Today, large-volume mobile phone datasets are widely applied to monitor the daily life of the urban population and to examine the structuring of the urban environment. In this paper, we discuss and develop a methodological procedure that uses such data to observe temporal differences of human presence in Bratislava, Slovakia. The study is based on a large-scale dataset of hourly records of signalling exchanges (VLR data) from all major mobile network operators in Slovakia. The records of the mobile network infrastructure are used as a suitable proxy variable for complex human activity at the city level, in the sense that they capture various kinds of spatial practices, and not only some specific activities (work cycle of a given locale, shopping, and similar events). Such an approach allows the classification of urban space using diurnal logs activity curves of mobile network cells. Six temporality types in Bratislava were identified, which may be designated as examples of an urban chronopolis. The results show the potential of the proposed method for measuring place temporality in cities and monitoring the urban environment with geo-referenced mobile phone data.