Tracking survey for individual travel behaviour using mobile communication instruments

This paper shows the fundamental concepts and methodologies of using mobile communication instruments for tracking survey for individual travel behaviour in urban space. In particular, the characteristics of the tracking method using cellular phone are discussed. In addition to tracking type data collection procedure, the data transfer and labelling algorithms are proposed for providing various trip attributes to each point included in the location positioning data. The accuracy of the location positioning is found satisfactory for describing metropolitan scale travel behaviour. Tracking a hundred of event spectators has proved that the survey system would be available for on-line monitoring of a number of travellers in urban area. It is concluded that the proposed methodologies could be added in the toolbox of travel measurement. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.