Skip to content

Measuring people and populations

Question. Which measure answers my research question, and what does it mean?

Individual measures describe each person; collective measures describe where and when the whole population moves. To run the individual measures on real data, open Measure individual mobility.

Which measure for which question

Question Start with Unit
How widely does each person range? radius_of_gyration, maximum_distance km
How long are their trips and waits? jump_lengths, waiting_times km, seconds
How many places, how evenly used? number_of_locations, uncorrelated_entropy count, bits
Which places matter? frequency_rank, home_location, work_location places
When do visits occur? visits_per_time_unit (collective) visits per interval
Which origins and destinations connect? od_matrix (collective) trips

Choosing the input

Point-based measures such as the radius of gyration use raw trajectories. Visit-based measures (diversity, regularity, motif measures) need visit tables, such as staypoints. OD measures need trips or an origin-destination layout. Do not average a per-person result by hand when a collective function already defines the population.

Assumptions

Distances are straight lines in kilometres, times are seconds, and hour-of-day measures treat hours in the data's own time zone, so convert to local time first.

Individual measures · Collective measures · Evaluation measures

Worked examples: Measure individual mobility, Routine, predictability and mobility profiles and Population measures, Flows between places and Occupancy and phone records.