Measurement of human activity using velocity GPS data obtained from mobile phones

TL;DR

This study uses GPS velocity data from mobile phones to analyze human activity patterns, especially during natural disasters like earthquakes, to improve disaster response planning.

Contribution

It introduces a method to quantify human activity changes via GPS velocity data during disasters, focusing on natural events like earthquakes.

Findings

Velocity increases with social activity levels.

Human activity drops significantly during earthquakes.

Velocity data can identify high and low activity intervals.

Abstract

Human movement is used as an indicator of human activity in modern society. The velocity of moving humans is calculated based on position information obtained from mobile phones. The level of human activity, as recorded by velocity, varies throughout the day. Therefore, velocity can be used to identify the intervals of highest and lowest activity. More specifically, we obtained mobile-phone GPS data from the people around Shibuya station in Tokyo, which has the highest population density in Japan. From these data, we observe that velocity tends to consistently increase with the changes in social activities. For example, during the earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture in April 2016, the activity on that day was much lower than usual. In this research, we focus on natural disasters such as earthquakes owing to their significant effects on human activities in developed countries like Japan. In the event of a natural disaster in another developed country, considering the change in human behavior at the time of the disaster (e.g., the 2016 Kumamoto Great Earthquake) from the viewpoint of velocity allows us to improve our planning for mitigation measures. Thus, we analyze the changes in human activity through velocity calculations in Shibuya, Tokyo, and compare times of disasters with normal times.