Predictability of Irregular Human Mobility

TL;DR

This paper investigates the predictability of irregular human mobility across different populations and contexts, revealing diverse patterns influenced by purpose and demographics using survey data from Australia.

Contribution

It introduces methods to estimate mobility predictability considering context and purpose, highlighting variability across populations and travel reasons.

Findings

European holiday travelers are less predictable than students.

East Asian visitors are more predictable for holidays than education.

Residents from populous states have less predictable mobility patterns.

Abstract

Understanding human mobility is critical for decision support in areas from urban planning to infectious diseases control. Prior work has focused on tracking daily logs of outdoor mobility without considering relevant context, which contain a mixture of regular and irregular human movement for a range of purposes, and thus diverse effects on the dynamics have been ignored. This study aims to focus on irregular human movement of different meta-populations with various purposes. We propose approaches to estimate the predictability of mobility in different contexts. With our survey data from international and domestic visitors to Australia, we found that the travel patterns of Europeans visiting for holidays are less predictable than those visiting for education, while East Asian visitors show the opposite patterns, ie, more predictable for holidays than for education. Domestic residents from the most populous Australian states exhibit the most unpredictable patterns, while visitors from less populated states show the highest predictable movement.