From the microchip to the Planet

The projects presented in this article focus on the interaction generated betwwwn people and objects, from the houshold all the way to the urban scale. Integrating and displaying data is transforming everyday objects and environments and the trend will allow us to disover new uses for digital technology

Del microchip al Planeta

Els projectes que es presenten a aquest article es centren en la interacció que s'està generant entre les persones i les coses, des de l'escala domèstica, fins a l'escala urbana. Integrar i visualitzar dades està modificant els objectes i entorns quotidians, i ens permetrà descobrir nous usos de la tecnologia digital

Exploring universal patterns in human home-work commuting from mobile phone data

Home-work commuting has always attracted significant research attention because of its impact on human mobility. One of the key assumptions in this domain of study is the universal uniformity of commute times. However, a true comparison of commute patterns has often been hindered by the intrinsic differences in data collection methods, which make observation from different countries potentially biased and unreliable. In the present work, we approach this problem through the use of mobile phone call detail records (CDRs), which offers a consistent method for investigating mobility patterns in wholly different parts of the world. We apply our analysis to a broad range of datasets, at both the country and city scale. Additionally, we compare these results with those obtained from vehicle GPS traces in Milan. While different regions have some unique commute time characteristics, we show that the home-work time distributions and average values within a single region are indeed largely independent of commute distance or country (Portugal, Ivory Coast, and Boston)--despite substantial spatial and infrastructural differences. Furthermore, a comparative analysis demonstrates that such distance-independence holds true only if we consider multimodal commute behaviors--as consistent with previous studies. In car-only (Milan GPS traces) and car-heavy (Saudi Arabia) commute datasets, we see that commute time is indeed influenced by commute distance