Understanding Google Location History as a Tool for Travel Diary Data Acquisition

Author:

Cools Dillan1,McCallum Scott Christian1,Rainham Daniel2,Taylor Nathan3,Patterson Zachary1

Affiliation:

1. Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, Transportation Research for Integrated Planning (TRIP) Lab, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

3. Food Policy Lab, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Abstract

Understanding human mobility within urban settings is fundamental for urban and transport planning. Travel demand modeling and planning typically rely on data that are collected from large-scale household travel surveys (i.e., origin–destination surveys) and compiled into single- or multiple-day travel diaries. The laborious task of collecting these data has left traditional methods with numerous limitations, resulting in significant trade-offs in regard to accuracy, sample size, and study duration, while also being vulnerable to reporting and transcription error. Rising mobile phone ownership has provided opportunities to acquire expansive cellular network data from service providers and location-based service data through smartphone applications. At the same time, the Google Maps smartphone application provides built-in infrastructure that can passively collect detailed location information from user smartphone devices. The resulting data are known as Google location history (GLH). To better understand the potential of these data offerings in transportation modeling and planning, GLH data passively collected from five different smartphones following prescribed itineraries over 12 days was evaluated. As 51% of 934 locations and 32% of 888 trips were matched to the pre-determined travel diary data, it was determined that GLH data does not currently appear to be an adequate tool for travel diary data collection. On average, locations that were missed by GLH were shorter (mean of 355 s), whereas locations that were identified were longer (mean of 762 s).

Funder

Canada Research Chairs and Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Awards

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Mechanical Engineering,Civil and Structural Engineering

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