{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,28]],"date-time":"2026-04-28T02:45:52Z","timestamp":1777344352537,"version":"3.51.4"},"reference-count":33,"publisher":"Springer Science and Business Media LLC","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]],"date-time":"2019-10-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1570838400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"},{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]],"date-time":"2019-10-12T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1570838400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100001942","name":"CHIST-ERA","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["CHIST-ERA-2012 MACACO"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["CHIST-ERA-2012 MACACO"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100001942","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]},{"DOI":"10.13039\/100012950","name":"INRIA","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","award":["EMBRACE"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["EMBRACE"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100012950","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"crossref"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["link.springer.com"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["EPJ Data Sci."],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract<\/jats:title>\n              <jats:p>Mobile phone data are a popular source of positioning information in many recent studies that have largely improved our understanding of human mobility. These data consist of time-stamped and geo-referenced communication events recorded by network operators, on a per-subscriber basis. They allow for unprecedented tracking of populations of millions of individuals over long periods that span months. Nevertheless, due to the uneven processes that govern mobile communications, the sampling of user locations provided by mobile phone data tends to be sparse and irregular in time, leading to substantial gaps in the resulting trajectory information. In this paper, we illustrate the severity of the problem through an empirical study of a large-scale Call Detail Records (CDR) dataset. We then propose Context-enhanced Trajectory Reconstruction, a new technique that hinges on tensor factorization as a core method to complete individual CDR-based trajectories. The proposed solution infers missing locations with a median displacement within two network cells from the actual position of the user, on an hourly basis and even when as little as 1% of her original mobility is known. Our approach lets us revisit seminal works in the light of complete mobility data, unveiling potential biases that incomplete trajectories obtained from legacy CDR induce on key results about human mobility laws, trajectory uniqueness, and movement predictability.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]],"date-time":"2019-10-12T06:50:33Z","timestamp":1570863033000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":52,"title":["Complete trajectory reconstruction from sparse mobile phone data"],"prefix":"10.1140","volume":"8","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9939-7129","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Guangshuo","family":"Chen","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Aline Carneiro","family":"Viana","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Marco","family":"Fiore","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]},{"given":"Carlos","family":"Sarraute","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]]},"reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"206_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-015-0046-0","volume":"4","author":"VD Blondel","year":"2015","unstructured":"Blondel VD, Decuyper A, Krings G (2015) A survey of results on mobile phone datasets analysis. EPJ Data Sci 4(1):10. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-015-0046-0","journal-title":"EPJ Data Sci"},{"issue":"1","key":"206_CR2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"124","DOI":"10.1109\/comst.2015.2491361","volume":"18","author":"D Naboulsi","year":"2016","unstructured":"Naboulsi D, Fiore M, Ribot S, Stanica R (2016) Large-scale mobile traffic analysis: a survey. IEEE Commun Surv Tutor 18(1):124\u2013161. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/comst.2015.2491361","journal-title":"IEEE Commun Surv Tutor"},{"issue":"7196","key":"206_CR3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"779","DOI":"10.1038\/nature06958","volume":"453","author":"MC Gonzalez","year":"2008","unstructured":"Gonzalez MC, Hidalgo CA, Barabasi A-L (2008) Understanding individual human mobility patterns. Nature 453(7196):779\u2013782. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/nature06958","journal-title":"Nature"},{"issue":"5968","key":"206_CR4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1018","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1177170","volume":"327","author":"C Song","year":"2010","unstructured":"Song C, Qu Z, Blumm N, Barabasi A-L (2010) Limits of predictability in human mobility. Science 327(5968):1018\u20131021. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/science.1177170","journal-title":"Science"},{"issue":"1","key":"206_CR5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1038\/srep01376","volume":"3","author":"Y-A de Montjoye","year":"2013","unstructured":"de Montjoye Y-A, Hidalgo CA, Verleysen M, Blondel VD (2013) Unique in the crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility. Sci Rep 3(1):1376. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/srep01376","journal-title":"Sci Rep"},{"key":"206_CR6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"301","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-87393-8_18","volume-title":"Location based services and TeleCartography II: from sensor fusion to context models","author":"R Ahas","year":"2009","unstructured":"Ahas R, Silm S, Saluveer E, J\u00e4rv O (2009) Modelling home and work locations of populations using passive mobile positioning data. In: Gartner G, Rehrl K (eds) Location based services and TeleCartography II: from sensor fusion to context models. Springer, Berlin, pp\u00a0301\u2013315. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-540-87393-8_18"},{"issue":"84","key":"206_CR7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1098\/rsif.2013.0246","volume":"10","author":"CM Schneider","year":"2013","unstructured":"Schneider CM, Belik V, Couronne T, Smoreda Z, Gonzalez MC (2013) Unravelling daily human mobility motifs. J R Soc Interface 10(84):20130246. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1098\/rsif.2013.0246","journal-title":"J R Soc Interface"},{"issue":"12","key":"206_CR8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2149","DOI":"10.1109\/TVCG.2013.226","volume":"19","author":"N Ferreira","year":"2013","unstructured":"Ferreira N, Poco J, Vo HT, Freire J, Silva CT (2013) Visual exploration of big spatio-temporal urban data: a study of New York city taxi trips. IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph 19(12):2149\u20132158. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/TVCG.2013.226","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph"},{"key":"206_CR9","series-title":"SIGSPATIAL \u201915","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"40:1","DOI":"10.1145\/2820783.2820821","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 23rd SIGSPATIAL international conference on advances in geographic information systems","author":"D Zhang","year":"2015","unstructured":"Zhang D, Zhao J, Zhang F, He T (2015) coMobile: real-time human mobility modeling at urban scale using multi-view learning. In: Proceedings of the 23rd SIGSPATIAL international conference on advances in geographic information systems. SIGSPATIAL \u201915. ACM, New York, pp\u00a040:1\u201340:10. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/2820783.2820821"},{"key":"206_CR10","series-title":"MobiCom \u201907","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"123","DOI":"10.1145\/1287853.1287868","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on mobile computing and networking","author":"H Zang","year":"2007","unstructured":"Zang H, Bolot JC (2007) Mining call and mobility data to improve paging efficiency in cellular networks. In: Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM international conference on mobile computing and networking. MobiCom \u201907. ACM, New York, pp\u00a0123\u2013134. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/1287853.1287868"},{"key":"206_CR11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"126","DOI":"10.1109\/SAHCN.2014.6990335","volume-title":"2014 eleventh annual IEEE international conference on sensing, communication, and networking (SECON)","author":"EMR Oliveira","year":"2014","unstructured":"Oliveira EMR, Viana AC (2014) From routine to network deployment for data offloading in metropolitan areas. In: 2014 eleventh annual IEEE international conference on sensing, communication, and networking (SECON), pp\u00a0126\u2013134. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/SAHCN.2014.6990335"},{"key":"206_CR12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"57","DOI":"10.1109\/PASSAT\/SocialCom.2011.142","volume-title":"2011 IEEE third international conference on privacy, security, risk and trust and 2011 IEEE third international conference on social computing","author":"E Frias-Martinez","year":"2011","unstructured":"Frias-Martinez E, Williamson G, Frias-Martinez V (2011) An agent-based model of epidemic spread using human mobility and social network information. In: 2011 IEEE third international conference on privacy, security, risk and trust and 2011 IEEE third international conference on social computing, pp\u00a057\u201364. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/PASSAT\/SocialCom.2011.142"},{"key":"206_CR13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"44","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comcom.2018.03.012","volume":"122","author":"G Chen","year":"2018","unstructured":"Chen G, Hoteit S, Viana AC, Fiore M, Sarraute C (2018) Enriching sparse mobility information in call detail records. Comput Commun 122:44\u201358. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.comcom.2018.03.012","journal-title":"Comput Commun"},{"issue":"3","key":"206_CR14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2412096.2412101","volume":"16","author":"G Ranjan","year":"2012","unstructured":"Ranjan G, Zang H, Zhang Z-L, Bolot J (2012) Are call detail records biased for sampling human mobility? Mob Comput Commun Rev 16(3):33. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/2412096.2412101","journal-title":"Mob Comput Commun Rev"},{"key":"206_CR15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"836","DOI":"10.1109\/ASONAM.2014.6921683","volume-title":"2014 IEEE\/ACM international conference on advances in social networks analysis and mining (ASONAM 2014)","author":"C Sarraute","year":"2014","unstructured":"Sarraute C, Blanc P, Burroni J (2014) A study of age and gender seen through mobile phone usage patterns in Mexico. In: 2014 IEEE\/ACM international conference on advances in social networks analysis and mining (ASONAM 2014), pp\u00a0836\u2013843. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/ASONAM.2014.6921683"},{"issue":"1","key":"206_CR16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds10","volume":"1","author":"H-H Jo","year":"2012","unstructured":"Jo H-H, Karsai M, Karikoski J, Kaski K (2012) Spatiotemporal correlations of handset-based service usages. EPJ Data Sci 1(1):1. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1140\/epjds10","journal-title":"EPJ Data Sci"},{"key":"206_CR17","series-title":"CHANTS \u201916","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"45","DOI":"10.1145\/2979683.2979685","volume-title":"Proceedings of the eleventh ACM workshop on challenged networks","author":"S Hoteit","year":"2016","unstructured":"Hoteit S, Chen G, Viana A, Fiore M (2016) Filling the gaps: on the completion of sparse call detail records for mobility analysis. In: Proceedings of the eleventh ACM workshop on challenged networks. CHANTS \u201916. ACM, New York, pp\u00a045\u201350. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/2979683.2979685"},{"key":"206_CR18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"469","DOI":"10.1109\/INFCOM.2012.6195786","volume-title":"2012 proceedings IEEE INFOCOM","author":"M Ficek","year":"2012","unstructured":"Ficek M, Kencl L (2012) Inter-call mobility model: a spatio-temporal refinement of call data records using a Gaussian mixture model. In: 2012 proceedings IEEE INFOCOM, pp\u00a0469\u2013477. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/INFCOM.2012.6195786"},{"key":"206_CR19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"296","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2014.02.011","volume":"64","author":"S Hoteit","year":"2014","unstructured":"Hoteit S, Secci S, Sobolevsky S, Ratti C, Pujolle G (2014) Estimating human trajectories and hotspots through mobile phone data. Comput Netw 64:296\u2013307. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.comnet.2014.02.011","journal-title":"Comput Netw"},{"key":"206_CR20","series-title":"KDD \u201908","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"596","DOI":"10.1145\/1401890.1401963","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining","author":"M Seshadri","year":"2008","unstructured":"Seshadri M, Machiraju S, Sridharan A, Bolot J, Faloutsos C, Leskove J (2008) Mobile call graphs: beyond power-law and lognormal distributions. In: Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGKDD international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining. KDD \u201908. ACM, New York, pp\u00a0596\u2013604. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/1401890.1401963"},{"key":"206_CR21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"247","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-00615-4-14","volume-title":"Geographic information science at the heart of Europe","author":"C Iovan","year":"2013","unstructured":"Iovan C, Olteanu-Raimond A-M, Couronn\u00e9 T, Smoreda Z (2013) Moving and calling: mobile phone data quality measurements and spatiotemporal uncertainty in human mobility studies. In: Vandenbroucke D, Bucher B, Crompvoets J (eds) Geographic information science at the heart of Europe. Springer, Cham, pp\u00a0247\u2013265. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/978-3-319-00615-4-14"},{"key":"206_CR22","volume-title":"IEEE WoWMoM 2019\u201420th IEEE international symposium on a world of wireless, mobile and multimedia networks","author":"P Katsikouli","year":"2019","unstructured":"Katsikouli P, Fiore M, Furno A, Stanica R (2019) Characterizing and removing oscillations in mobile phone location data. In: IEEE WoWMoM 2019\u201420th IEEE international symposium on a world of wireless, mobile and multimedia networks, Washington DC, United States. \n                    https:\/\/hal.inria.fr\/hal-02110719"},{"issue":"1","key":"206_CR23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-015-0040-6","volume":"4","author":"RW Douglass","year":"2015","unstructured":"Douglass RW, Meyer DA, Ram M, Rideout D, Song D (2015) High resolution population estimates from telecommunications data. EPJ Data Sci 4(1):4. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-015-0040-6","journal-title":"EPJ Data Sci"},{"key":"206_CR24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"73","DOI":"10.1016\/j.pmcj.2016.04.005","volume":"33","author":"EMR Oliveira","year":"2016","unstructured":"Oliveira EMR, Viana AC, Sarraute C, Brea J, Alvarez-Hamelin I (2016) On the regularity of human mobility. Pervasive Mob Comput 33:73\u201390. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.pmcj.2016.04.005","journal-title":"Pervasive Mob Comput"},{"issue":"11","key":"206_CR25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"2818","DOI":"10.1109\/tpds.2013.269","volume":"25","author":"L Kong","year":"2014","unstructured":"Kong L, Xia M, Liu X-Y, Chen G, Gu Y, Wu M-Y, Liu X (2014) Data loss and reconstruction in wireless sensor networks. IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst 25(11):2818\u20132828. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/tpds.2013.269","journal-title":"IEEE Trans Parallel Distrib Syst"},{"key":"206_CR26","series-title":"RecSys \u201910","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"79","DOI":"10.1145\/1864708.1864727","volume-title":"Proceedings of the fourth ACM conference on recommender systems","author":"A Karatzoglou","year":"2010","unstructured":"Karatzoglou A, Amatriain X, Baltrunas L, Oliver N (2010) Multiverse recommendation: N-dimensional tensor factorization for context-aware collaborative filtering. In: Proceedings of the fourth ACM conference on recommender systems. RecSys \u201910. ACM, New York, pp\u00a079\u201386. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/1864708.1864727"},{"issue":"3","key":"206_CR27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"455","DOI":"10.1137\/07070111x","volume":"51","author":"TG Kolda","year":"2009","unstructured":"Kolda TG, Bader BW (2009) Tensor decompositions and applications. SIAM Rev 51(3):455\u2013500. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1137\/07070111x","journal-title":"SIAM Rev"},{"key":"206_CR28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"913","DOI":"10.1109\/CCNC.2006.1593171","volume-title":"CCNC 2006. 2006 3rd IEEE consumer communications and networking conference, 2006","author":"JN Portela","year":"2006","unstructured":"Portela JN, Alencar MS (2006) Cellular network as a multiplicatively weighted Voronoi diagram. In: CCNC 2006. 2006 3rd IEEE consumer communications and networking conference, 2006, vol\u00a02, pp\u00a0913\u2013917. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/CCNC.2006.1593171"},{"key":"206_CR29","series-title":"INFOCOM\u201916","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/INFOCOM.2016.7524491","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 35th annual IEEE international conference on computer communications","author":"J Jeong","year":"2016","unstructured":"Jeong J, Leconte M, Proutiere A (2016) Cluster-aided mobility predictions. In: Proceedings of the 35th annual IEEE international conference on computer communications. INFOCOM\u201916. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/INFOCOM.2016.7524491"},{"key":"206_CR30","series-title":"Lecture notes in physics","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/3-540-59222-9","volume-title":"L\u00e9vy flights and related topics in physics","author":"MF Shlesinger","year":"1995","unstructured":"Shlesinger MF, Zaslavsky GM, Frisch U (1995) L\u00e9vy flights and related topics in physics. Lecture notes in physics, vol\u00a0450. Springer, Berlin. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/3-540-59222-9"},{"key":"206_CR31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"882","DOI":"10.1109\/INFCOM.2011.5935313","volume-title":"2011 proceedings IEEE INFOCOM","author":"U Paul","year":"2011","unstructured":"Paul U, Subramanian AP, Buddhikot MM, Das SR (2011) Understanding traffic dynamics in cellular data networks. In: 2011 proceedings IEEE INFOCOM, pp\u00a0882\u2013890. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/INFCOM.2011.5935313"},{"key":"206_CR32","unstructured":"Couronn\u00e9 T, Smoreda Z, Raimond AO (2013) Chatty Mobiles: individual mobility and communication patterns. CoRR abs\/1301.6553. \n                    http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1301.6553"},{"key":"206_CR33","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5916","DOI":"10.1109\/ICC.2015.7249265","volume-title":"2015 IEEE international conference on communications (ICC)","author":"A Hess","year":"2015","unstructured":"Hess A, Marsh I, Gillblad D (2015) Exploring communication and mobility behavior of 3G network users and its temporal consistency. In: 2015 IEEE international conference on communications (ICC), pp\u00a05916\u20135921. \n                    https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/ICC.2015.7249265"}],"container-title":["EPJ Data Science"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8\/fulltext.html","content-type":"text\/html","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8.pdf","content-type":"application\/pdf","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2020,10,10]],"date-time":"2020-10-10T23:05:04Z","timestamp":1602371104000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/epjdatascience.springeropen.com\/articles\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]]},"references-count":33,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,12]]}},"alternative-id":["206"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1140\/epjds\/s13688-019-0206-8","relation":{},"ISSN":["2193-1127"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2193-1127","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,10,12]]},"assertion":[{"value":"21 January 2019","order":1,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"3 September 2019","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"12 October 2019","order":3,"name":"first_online","label":"First Online","group":{"name":"ArticleHistory","label":"Article History"}},{"value":"Data collection was approved by the data owners, and written informed consent has been obtained for all study participants.","order":1,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Ethics approval and consent to participate"}},{"value":"The authors declare that they have no competing interests.","order":2,"name":"Ethics","group":{"name":"EthicsHeading","label":"Competing interests"}}],"article-number":"30"}}