Credit: iStockphoto
SAN DIEGO: Scientists used mobile-phone logs to track thousands of people's travel patterns, and found that we're almost all predictable. The data could be used in urban planning or even mobile phone applications.
The three-month study examined 50,000 people in an undisclosed city in Europe, following each person's movements by tracking the mobile-phone towers their phones connected with during their travels.
Even though some people roamed more widely than others, almost all were creatures of habit, according to the study, led by Chaoming Song of at Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts.
We're creatures of habit
Not matter if they were homebodies or jetsetters, people repeatedly followed the same routes to the same destinations, the researchers report in the journal Science.
Song's colleague and coauthor, Nicholas Blumm, says the finding is interesting simply from a sociological perspective. "How routine am I?" he asks. "Can you guess where I will go next?"
But it can also help urban planners, businesses, and social networking websites, he says. "Already, your mobile phone knows where it is. Imagine if it also knew where it was going."
Your phone could plan your route
"If it had your shopping list, it could let you know about a sale on that coat you wanted; perhaps you'd like to stop by Macy's [or other department store] on your way home."
"Oh and by the way, if you want to catch up, your best friend from high school will be there too. It would give new meaning to the phrase, Personal Digital Assistant," said Blumm.
Song believes that such data could also be of use to public health officials worried about the spread of disease.
By predicting individual people's motion, Song says, it may be possible to improve the ability to foresee how infections will spread, even at the level of individual neighborhoods or streets.
Other forms of data mining are equally powerful. Paul Earle is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, who scans Twittered "tweets" to for the word "earthquake."
