Evaluating the Usability of Geo-located Twitter as a Tool for Human Activity and Mobility Patterns: A Case Study for New York City

The increasing use of new mobile devices and location sharing services such as Twitter has provided novel approaches for studying human mobility patterns with satisfactory quantities. The role of location in digital world has changed as expanding numbers of internet users including location information to their posts. These digital footprints allowed researchers to study the spatial and temporal characteristics of human activity and mobility patterns. This paper introduces an approach to collecting and utilizing geo-located Twitter status updates to report a quantitative assessment of human mobility. The results show that Twitter users follow the “Lévy Flight” mobility patterns. Moreover, the estimated mobility flows are found to be similar to the ground-truth data obtained from Regional Household Travel Survey.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ50 Standing Committee on Information Systems and Technology. Alternate title: Evaluating Usability of Geo-located Twitter as a Tool for Human Activity and Mobility Patterns: Case Study for New York City
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Kurkcu, Abdullah
  • Ozbay, Kaan
  • Morgul, Ender Faruk
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Location; Mobility; Travel patterns; Travel surveys
• Identifier Terms: Twitter
• Geographic Terms: New York Metropolitan Area
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01590573
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-3901
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 18 2016 5:04PM