Mobile phones have become ubiquitous in today's world, with nearly 8.6 billion mobile devices in use worldwide, as of 2022 statistics from International Telecommunications Union. With this widespread adoption comes a wealth of data that can be used for transport planning, operations, and regulation. In this guide, we will explore the different transport-related use-cases, techniques for collecting, processing, and analyzing mobile phone data and discuss the role of different stakeholders in leveraging this data for transportation.

The UN Global Working Group on Mobile Phone Data released its first handbook in September 2019 (https://unstats.un.org/bigdata/task-teams/mobile-phone/MPD%20Handbook%2020191004.pdf), which focused on some of the technical aspects of using MPD in transport and commuting such as:

  1. How the network operators collect such datasets, and the technical complexities associated with data acquisition.
  2. The access models that agencies and operators can utilize to get these datasets for transport-related applications, and
  3. Some of the higher-level processing associated with MPD.

Over the last four years, the use of MPD has accelerated across cities and jurisdictions, and mobile phone operators have developed well-established mechanisms to collect population density and people movement data from this. Transport organizations primarily use such data to understand mobility patterns and take decisions to improve mobility, and to report on Key Mobility Indicators. Hence, this guide focuses on these mature applications of MPD with specific case-studies from around the world to help understand how some of the agencies and cities are currently using MPD in their planning and operations. The handbook is primarily aimed at transport statisticians, planners, operators, and regulators to understand the nuances of using MPD in decision-making by shedding light into the types of mobile phone data, their pros and cons, type of processing they go through before they are used for analysis as well as the applications in transportation.


Methodological Guides on the use of mobile phone data

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