{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,17]],"date-time":"2025-10-17T19:46:37Z","timestamp":1760730397449,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":25,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2012,11,2]],"date-time":"2012-11-02T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1351814400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IJGI"],"abstract":"<jats:p>In this paper we present a visual analytics approach for deriving spatio-temporal patterns of collective human mobility from a vast mobile network traffic data set. More than 88 million movements between pairs of radio cells\u2014so-called handovers\u2014served as a proxy for more than two months of mobility within four urban test areas in Northern Italy. In contrast to previous work, our approach relies entirely on visualization and mapping techniques, implemented in several software applications. We purposefully avoid statistical or probabilistic modeling and, nonetheless, reveal characteristic and exceptional mobility patterns. The results show, for example, surprising similarities and symmetries amongst the total mobility and people flows between the test areas. Moreover, the exceptional patterns detected can be associated to real-world events such as soccer matches. We conclude that the visual analytics approach presented can shed new light on large-scale collective urban mobility behavior and thus helps to better understand the \u201cpulse\u201d of dynamic urban systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/ijgi1030256","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2012,11,2]],"date-time":"2012-11-02T12:12:45Z","timestamp":1351858365000},"page":"256-271","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":42,"title":["A Visual Analytics Approach for Extracting Spatio-Temporal Urban Mobility Information from Mobile Network Traffic"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"1","author":[{"given":"G\u00fcnther","family":"Sagl","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Doctoral College Geographic Information Science, University of Salzburg, Schillerstra\u00dfe 30, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-0474-3234","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Martin","family":"Loidl","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geoinformatics (Z_GIS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstra\u00dfe 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria"}]},{"given":"Euro","family":"Beinat","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Geoinformatics (Z_GIS), University of Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstra\u00dfe 34, A-5020 Salzburg, Austria"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2012,11,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Di Lorenzo, G., and Calabrese, F. (,  2011). Identifying Human Spatio-Temporal Activity Patterns from Mobile-Phone Traces. Proceedings of 2011 14th International IEEE Conference Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), Washington, DC, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/ITSC.2011.6082974"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"912","DOI":"10.1038\/467912a","article-title":"A unified theory of urban living","volume":"467","author":"Bettencourt","year":"2010","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"7301","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.0610172104","article-title":"Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities","volume":"104","author":"Bettencourt","year":"2007","journal-title":"Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA"},{"key":"ref_4","unstructured":"Jekel, T., Car, A., Strobl, J., and Griesebner, G. (2012). GI-Forum 2012: Geovisualization, Society and Learning, Wichmann Verlag."},{"key":"ref_5","unstructured":"Rubio, A., Frias-Martinez, V., Frias-Martinez, E., and Oliver, N. (2010, January 22\u201324). Human Mobility in Advanced and Developing Economies: A Comparative Analysis. Proceedings of AAAI 2010 Spring Symposia Artificial Intelligence for Development, AI-D 2010, Stanford, CA, USA."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Isaacman, S., Becker, R., C\u00e1ceres, R., Kobourov, S., Rowland, J., and Varshavsky, A. (2010, January 22\u201323). A Tale of Two Cities. Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems & Applications, Annapolis, MD, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/1734583.1734589"},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Martino, M., Calabrese, F., Lorenzo, G.D., Andris, C., Liu, L., and Ratti, C. (2010, January 7\u201310). Ocean of Information: Fusing Aggregate & Individual Dynamics for Metropolitan Analysis. Proceedings of 15th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Hong Kong, China.","DOI":"10.1145\/1719970.1720030"},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"211","DOI":"10.1007\/s10708-007-9111-y","article-title":"Citizens as sensors: The world of volunteered geography","volume":"69","author":"Goodchild","year":"2007","journal-title":"GeoJournal"},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Drummond, J., Billen, R., Jo\u00e3o, E., and Forrest, D. (2006). Dynamic & Mobile GIS: Investigating Change in Space and Time, CRC Press\/Taylor & Francis.","DOI":"10.1201\/9781420008609"},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"141","DOI":"10.1016\/j.annals.2006.07.007","article-title":"Tracking tourists in the digital age","volume":"34","author":"Shoval","year":"2007","journal-title":"Ann. Tourism Res."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"118","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compenvurbsys.2011.07.003","article-title":"Correlating mobile phone usage and travel behavior\u2014A case study of Harbin, China","volume":"36","author":"Yuan","year":"2012","journal-title":"Comput. Environ. Urban Syst."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"191","DOI":"10.1068\/b3402com","article-title":"Sensing human society","volume":"34","author":"Shoval","year":"2007","journal-title":"Environ. Plan. B-Plan. Design"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"779","DOI":"10.1038\/nature06958","article-title":"Understanding individual human mobility patterns","volume":"453","author":"Hidalgo","year":"2008","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ratti, C., Sobolevsky, S., Calabrese, F., Andris, C., Reades, J., Martino, M., Claxton, R., and Strogatz, S.H. (2010). Redrawing the map of great britain from a network of human interactions. PLoS One.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0014248"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"14","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-14715-9_3","article-title":"Activity-Aware Map: Identifying Human Daily Activity Pattern Using Mobile Phone Data","volume":"6219","author":"Salah","year":"2010","journal-title":"Human Behavior Understanding"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"41","DOI":"10.1080\/10630731003597322","article-title":"Does urban mobility have a daily routine? Learning from the aggregate data of mobile networks","volume":"17","author":"Sevtsuk","year":"2010","journal-title":"J. Urban Technol."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"22","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-12654-3_2","article-title":"The Geography of Taste: Analyzing Cell-Phone Mobility and Social Events","volume":"6030\/2010","author":"Calabrese","year":"2010","journal-title":"Pervasive Computing (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)"},{"key":"ref_18","first-page":"354","article-title":"Extracting Dynamic Urban Mobility Patterns from Mobile Phone Data","volume":"7478\/2012","author":"Xiao","year":"2012","journal-title":"Geographic Information Science (Lecture Notes in Computer Science)"},{"key":"ref_19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"839","DOI":"10.1080\/13658810701349011","article-title":"Geovisual analytics for spatial decision support: Setting the research agenda","volume":"21","author":"Andrienko","year":"2007","journal-title":"Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci."},{"key":"ref_20","unstructured":"Keim, D., Kohlhammer, J., Ellis, G., and Mansmann, F. (2010). Mastering the Information Age-Solving Problems with Visual Analytics, Eurographics Association."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"117","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2011.12.035","article-title":"Solving problems with visual analytics","volume":"7","author":"Kohlhammer","year":"2011","journal-title":"Procedia Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"200","DOI":"10.1080\/17489725.2010.532816","article-title":"A framework for using self-organising maps to analyse spatio-temporal patterns, exemplified by analysis of mobile phone usage","volume":"4","author":"Andrienko","year":"2010","journal-title":"J. Locat. Based Serv."},{"key":"ref_23","unstructured":"Telecom Italia Official Website. Available online:http:\/\/www.telecomitalia.com\/tit\/en\/investors\/business_areas_competitive_scenario\/domestic_market.html."},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"161","DOI":"10.1016\/j.compenvurbsys.2009.01.007","article-title":"From spatial interaction data to spatial interaction information? Geovisualisation and spatial structures of migration from the 2001 UK census","volume":"33","author":"Rae","year":"2009","journal-title":"Comput. Environ. Urban Syst."},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"Fondazione CRUP Official Website. Available online:http:\/\/www.infondazione.it\/eventi\/60-anniversario-brigata-alpina-julia."}],"container-title":["ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/1\/3\/256\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T21:53:16Z","timestamp":1760219596000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2220-9964\/1\/3\/256"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2012,11,2]]},"references-count":25,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2012,12]]}},"alternative-id":["ijgi1030256"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/ijgi1030256","relation":{},"ISSN":["2220-9964"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"2220-9964"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2012,11,2]]}}}