A Tale of Many Cities — Visualizing Signatures of Human Activity in Cities Across the Globe

Abstract

The availability of big data on human activity is currently changing the way we look at our surroundings. In this article, we present a technique and visualization tool which uses aggregated activity measures of mobile networks to gain information about human activity shaping the structure of the cities. Based on ten months of mobile network data, activity patterns can be compared through time and space to unravel the “city’s pulse” as seen through the specific signatures of different locations. Furthermore, the tool allows classifying the neighborhoods into functional clusters based on the timeline of human activity. The approach and the tool provide new ways of looking at the city structure from historical perspective and potentially also in real-time based on dynamic up-to-date records of human behavior. The online tool presents results for four global cities: New York, London, Hong Kong and Los Angeles.

Keywords

Human Activity / Big Date / Mobile Network Activity Profile / City Spatial Structur

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press