Conserved quantities in human mobility
From locations to trips
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Author / Producer
Date
2022-06
Publication Type
Working Paper
ETH Bibliography
yes
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Abstract
Quantifying intra-person variability in travel choices is essential for the comprehension of activity-travel behaviour. Due to a lack of appropriate datasets and methods, there is limited understanding of how an individual’s travel pattern evolves over months and years. We use two high-resolution user-labelled datasets consisting of billions of GPS track points from ∼ 3800 individuals to analyze individuals’ activity-travel behaviour over the long term. The general movement patterns of the considered population are characterised using mobility indicators. Despite the differences in the mobility patterns, we find that individuals from both datasets maintain a conserved quantity in the number of essential travel mode and activity location combinations over time, resulting from a balance between exploring new choice combinations and exploiting existing options. A typical individual maintains ∼ 15 mode-location combinations, of which ∼ 7 are travelled with a private vehicle every 5 weeks. The dynamics of this stability reveal that the exploration speed of locations is faster than the one for travel modes, and they can both be well modelled using a power-law fit that slows down over time. Our findings enrich the understanding of the long-term intra-person variability in activity-travel behaviour and open new possibilities for designing mobility simulation models.
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published
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Journal / series
Volume
1760
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
ETH Zurich, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation; IVT, ETH Zurich; Institute of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence
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Date collected
Date created
Subject
Human mobility; Individual activity-travel pattern; Mobility constraints
Organisational unit
03901 - Raubal, Martin / Raubal, Martin
03521 - Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus) / Axhausen, Kay W. (emeritus)
02655 - Netzwerk Stadt u. Landschaft ARCH u BAUG / Network City and Landscape ARCH and BAUG
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