From Narrative to Action: A Hierarchical LLM-Agent Framework for Human Mobility Generation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hierarchical LLM-agent framework that models human mobility by integrating narrative reasoning, planning, and execution, resulting in more realistic and interpretable synthetic trajectories.

Contribution

It presents a novel multi-layer cognitive hierarchy combining narrative generation, structured planning, and adaptive execution within LLMs for human mobility simulation.

Findings

Generated trajectories closely match real-world mobility patterns

The framework produces interpretable human decision logic

Adaptive behavior guided by occupation-aware mobility entropy

Abstract

Understanding and replicating human mobility requires not only spatial-temporal accuracy but also an awareness of the cognitive hierarchy underlying real-world travel decisions. Traditional agent-based or deep learning models can reproduce statistical patterns of movement but fail to capture the semantic coherence and causal logic of human behavior. Large language models (LLMs) show potential, but struggle to balance creative reasoning with strict structural compliance. This study proposes a Hierarchical LLM-Agent Framework, termed Narrative-to-Action, that integrates high-level narrative reasoning, mid-level reflective planning, and low-level behavioral execution within a unified cognitive hierarchy. At the macro level, one agent is employed as a "creative writer" to produce diary-style narratives rich in motivation and context, then uses another agent as a "structural parser" to convert narratives into machine-readable plans. A dynamic execution module further grounds agents in geographic environments and enables adaptive behavioral adjustments guided by a novel occupation-aware metric, Mobility Entropy by Occupation (MEO), which captures heterogeneous schedule flexibility across different occupational personalities. At the micro level, the agent executes concrete actions-selecting locations, transportation modes, and time intervals-through interaction with an environmental simulation. By embedding this multi-layer cognitive process, the framework produces not only synthetic trajectories that align closely with real-world patterns but also interpretable representations of human decision logic. This research advances synthetic mobility generation from a data-driven paradigm to a cognition-driven simulation, providing a scalable pathway for understanding, predicting, and synthesizing complex urban mobility behaviors through hierarchical LLM agents.