Large-Scale Mobile-Based Analysis for National Travel Demand Modeling

Mobile phones have achieved a high rate of penetration and gained great interest in the field of travel behavior studies. However, mobile phone data exploitation for national travel models has only been sporadically studied thus far. This work focuses on one of the most extensive cellular surveys of its kind carried out thus far in the world, which was performed for two years between 2018 and 2019 with the participation of the two largest cellular providers in Israel, as well as leading GPS companies. The large-scale cell phone survey covered half the population using cellphones aged 8+ in Israel and uncovered local and national trip patterns, revealing the structure of nationwide travel demand. The methodology consists of the following steps: (1) plausibility and quality checks for the data of the mobile operators and the GPS data providers; (2) algorithm development for trip detection, home/work location detection, location and time accuracy, and expansion factors; (3) accuracy test of origin-destination matrices at different resolutions, revisions of algorithms, and reproduction of data; and (4) validation of results by comparison to reliable external data sources. The results are characterized by high accuracy and representativeness of demand and indicate a strong correlation between the cellular survey and other reliable sources.