Tracking urban human activity from mobile phone calling patterns.

Autor: Daniel Monsivais, Asim Ghosh, Kunal Bhattacharya, Robin I M Dunbar, Kimmo Kaski
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS Computational Biology, Vol 13, Iss 11, p e1005824 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1553-734X
1553-7358
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005824
Popis: Timings of human activities are marked by circadian clocks which in turn are entrained to different environmental signals. In an urban environment the presence of artificial lighting and various social cues tend to disrupt the natural entrainment with the sunlight. However, it is not completely understood to what extent this is the case. Here we exploit the large-scale data analysis techniques to study the mobile phone calling activity of people in large cities to infer the dynamics of urban daily rhythms. From the calling patterns of about 1,000,000 users spread over different cities but lying inside the same time-zone, we show that the onset and termination of the calling activity synchronizes with the east-west progression of the sun. We also find that the onset and termination of the calling activity of users follows a yearly dynamics, varying across seasons, and that its timings are entrained to solar midnight. Furthermore, we show that the average mid-sleep time of people living in urban areas depends on the age and gender of each cohort as a result of biological and social factors.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals