Real-Time Urban Monitoring Using Cell Phones: A Case Study in Rome

This paper describes a new real-time urban monitoring system. The system uses the Localizing and Handling Network Event Systems (LocHNESs) platform developed by Telecom Italia for the real-time evaluation of urban dynamics based on the anonymous monitoring of mobile cellular networks. In addition, data are supplemented based on the instantaneous positioning of buses and taxis to provide information about urban mobility in real time, ranging from traffic conditions to the movements of pedestrians throughout the city. This system was exhibited at the Tenth International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. It marks the unprecedented monitoring of a large urban area, which covered most of the city of Rome, in real time using a variety of sensing systems and will hopefully open the way to a new paradigm of understanding and optimizing urban dynamics.

[1]  Randall Cayford,et al.  Investigation of Vehicles as Probes Using Global Positioning System and Cellular Phone Tracking: Field Operational Test , 2001 .

[2]  David J. Lovell,et al.  ACCURACY OF SPEED MEASUREMENTS FROM CELLULAR PHONE VEHICLE LOCATION SYSTEMS , 2001, J. Intell. Transp. Syst..

[3]  Gert Frølund Pedersen,et al.  COST 231 - Digital Mobile Radio Towards Future generation Systems , 1999 .

[4]  Daehyun Kim,et al.  Dynamic Origin–Destination Flow Estimation Using Cellular Communication System , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[5]  Michael L Pack,et al.  TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS OF ANONYMOUS MOBILE CALL SAMPLING , 2001 .

[6]  Franco Davoli,et al.  Road traffic estimation from location tracking data in the mobile cellular network , 2000, 2000 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference. Conference Record (Cat. No.00TH8540).

[7]  Brian Lee Smith,et al.  IMPROVING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TRAFFIC MONITORING BASED ON WIRELESS LOCATION TECHNOLOGY , 2004 .

[8]  Josep Blat,et al.  Digital Footprinting: Uncovering Tourists with User-Generated Content , 2008, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[9]  Randall Cayford,et al.  OPERATIONAL PARAMETERS AFFECTING THE USE OF ANONYMOUS CELL PHONE TRACKING FOR GENERATING TRAFFIC INFORMATION , 2003 .

[10]  Keith Willett,et al.  Review of "Location-based services fundamentals and operation" by Axel Küpper, John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2005 , 2005, UBIQ.

[11]  Carlo Ratti,et al.  Cellular Census: Explorations in Urban Data Collection , 2007, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[12]  Keemin Sohn,et al.  Space-Based Passing Time Estimation on a Freeway Using Cell Phones as Traffic Probes , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

[13]  Axel Küpper.  Location-based Services: Fundamentals and Operation , 2005 .

[14]  J. White,et al.  The use of mobile phone location data for traffic information , 2004 .

[15]  Alexandre M. Bayen,et al.  Using Mobile Phones to Forecast Arterial Traffic through Statistical Learning , 2010 .