Cellular phone data analysis in comprehensive transportation survey: A case study in Beijing

In the fourth Beijing comprehensive transportation survey, cellular phone data was used for person trip characteristics analysis. In this paper, traditional person trip survey and literature are reviewed firstly. It is worth mentioning that actual cellular phone data is used in this research rather than artificial data is in other literatures. Then, cellular phone location positioning technology is introduced. Person trip features are implicated in the massive location positioning data with timestamp. The method of data analysis is described in details. The procedure architecture is divided into four layers, which are data layer, model layer, system processing layer and application layer. Finally, resident distribution and hourly population density expansion results in Beijing based on cellular phone data analysis are shown and discussed. It is concluded that the analysis results are generally consistent with the historical statistics. In particular, the resident movement characteristics can be captured easily by the hourly population density expansion analysis. The method put forward in this research is reasonable and feasible, which provides a new tool for person trip characteristics survey of urban transportation planning.