The study concludes that humans are creatures of habit, mostly visiting the same few spots time and time again. Most people also move less than 10km on a regular basis, according to the study published in the journal Nature. The results could be used to help prevent outbreaks of disease or forecast traffic, the scientists said. Researchers have previously attempted to map human activity using GPS or surveys, but it is expensive. This approach tracked the movement of dollar bills in an attempt to reconstruct human movements. The study used data from the website wheresgeorge.com, which allows anyone to track a dollar bill as it circulates through the economy. The site has so far tracked nearly 130 million notes. Studies such as this suggested that humans wander in an apparently random fashion, similar to a so-called "Levy flight" pattern displayed by many foraging animals. The new work tracked 100,000 individuals selected randomly from a sample of more than six million phone users in a European country. Each time a participant made or received a call or text message, the location of the mobile base station relaying the data was recorded. The researchers said they were "not at liberty" to disclose where the information had been collected and said steps had been taken to guarantee the participants' anonymity. For example, individual phone numbers were disguised as 26 digit security codes. Information was collected for six months.
But, according to the researchers, a person's pattern of movement could be seen in just three. The results showed that most people's movements follow a precise mathematical relationship - known as a power law. The second surprise was that the patterns of people's movements, over short and long distances, were very similar: people tend to return to the same few places over and over again. Although the scale of the latest study is unprecedented, it is not the first time that mobile phone technology has been used to track people's movements. Scientists at MIT have used mobile phones to help construct a real-time model of traffic in Rome, whilst Microsoft researchers working on Project Lachesis are examining the possibility of mining mobile data to help commuters pick the optimum route to work, for example. Location data is increasingly used by forensic scientists to identify the movements of criminal suspects. For example, the technique was used by Italian police to capture Hussain Osman, one of four men jailed for the failed suicide bombings in London on 21 July. Commercial products also exist, allowing parents to track children or for friends to receive alerts when they are in a similar location. Moreover, Nokia have put forward an idea to attach sensors to phones that could report back on air quality. The project would allow a large location-specific database to be built very quickly. Ofcom is also planning to use mobiles to collect data about the quality of wi-fi connections around the UK.
More information:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7433128.stm
