HD-GEN: A High-Performance Software System for Human Mobility Data Generation Based on Patterns of Life

TL;DR

HD-GEN is a comprehensive software system that generates realistic human mobility datasets by combining empirical data with pattern-based simulations, calibrated and processed for various analytical applications.

Contribution

It introduces an integrated pipeline that generates, calibrates, processes, and visualizes large-scale human mobility data with high realism and flexibility.

Findings

Produces diverse, geographically grounded mobility logs

Calibrates simulation parameters to real-world data

Provides structured datasets and visual analytics tools

Abstract

Understanding individual-level human mobility is critical for a wide range of applications. As such, real-world trajectory datasets provide valuable insights into actual movement behaviors and patterns of life but are often constrained by data sparsity and participant bias. Synthetic data, by contrast, offers scalability and flexibility but frequently lacks realism. To address this gap, we introduce a comprehensive software pipeline for, generating, calibrating, processing, and visualizing large-scale individual-level human mobility datasets that combine the realism of empirical data with the control and extensibility of Patterns-of-Life simulations. Our system consists of four integrated components. (1) a data generation engine which constructs geographically grounded simulations using OpenStreetMap data to produce diverse mobility logs. (2) a genetic algorithm-based calibration module that fine-tunes simulation parameters to align with real-world mobility characteristics, such as daily trip counts and radius of gyration, enabling realistic behavioral modeling. (3) a data processing suite which transforms raw simulation logs into structured formats suitable for downstream applications, including model training and benchmarking, and (4) a visualization module that extracts key mobility patterns and insights from the processed datasets and presents them through intuitive visual analytics for improved interpretability.