Operationalizing Mobile Data for Urban Transport: Lessons from Freetown, Sierra Leone

In recent years, researchers have demonstrated that digital footprints from mobile phones can be exploited to generate data useful for transport planning, disaster response, and other development activities—thanks mainly to the high penetration rate of mobile phones even in low-income regions. Most recently, in the effort to mitigate the spread of COVID19, this data can be used to track mobility patterns and monitor the results of lock-down measures. However, as rightly noted by other scholars, most of the work has been limited to proofs of concept or academic work: it is hard to point to any real-world use cases. In contrast, in this work, the authors share experiences of using mobile data in a developing country for the preparation of an urban mobility project in Freetown, Sierra Leone, funded by the World Bank. The authors share good practices in the following areas: accessing mobile data from telecom operators, frameworks for generating origin and destination matrices, and validation of results.

• Record URL:
  https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/15463
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AED20 Standing Committee on Urban Transportation Data and Information Systems.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Matekenya, Dunstan
  • Espinet Alegre, Xavier
  • Arroyo Arroyo, Fatima
  • Gonzalez, Marta
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
• Date: 2021

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References;
• Pagination: 20p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Data collection; Data sharing; Developing countries; Mobile telephones; Mobility; Origin and destination; Travel patterns; Trip matrices; Urban transportation
• Geographic Terms: Freetown (Sierra Leone)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Planning and Forecasting;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01764802
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-01383
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 16 2021 4:00PM