How mobile network big data can be used to understand land usage in Sri Lanka

1. Leveraging
mobile
network
big
data
for
urban
planning
Kaushalya
Madhawa,
LIRNEasia
Responsible
use
of
mobile
meta-­‐data
to
support
public
purposes
Jetwing
Lagoon,
Negombo
08
August
2014
This
work
was
carried
out
with
the
aid
of
a
grant
from
the
InternaHonal
Development
Research
Centre,
OMawa,
Canada.

2. Some
urban
planning
challenges
• Understanding
ciHzen’s
actual
use
of
urban
environments
• Monitoring
urban
evoluHon
over
Hme
• Understanding
reasons
why
people
congregate
at
different
locaHons
• Assessing
the
impact
of
development
acHviHes
1

3. Some
urban
planning
challenges
• Understanding
ciHzen’s
actual
use
of
urban
environments
• Monitoring
urban
evoluHon
over
Hme
• Understanding
reasons
why
people
congregate
at
different
locaHons
• Assessing
the
impact
of
development
acHviHes
2

4. Can
we
use
mobile
network
data
to
understand
land
use?
• People
leave
digital
traces
when
they
use
communicaHon
devices.
• Mobile
communicaHon
paMerns
at
different
locaHons
can
be
leveraged
to
classify
them
into
land-­‐
use
categories.
3

5. User
signatures
at
two
different
base
staHons
4
Base station 1 Base station 2

6. Methodology
• Diurnal
paMern
of
users
is
profiled
at
different
base
staHons
during
weekdays
and
weekends
• Time
series
of
each
base
staHon
is
normalized
to
a
(0-­‐1)
range
• Euclidean
distance
between
two
Hme
series
is
used
to
cluster
base
staHons
in
an
unsupervised
manner
using
k-­‐means
algorithm
5

7. DistribuHon
of
base
staHons
in
Colombo
district
6

8. A
closer
look
at
base
staHons
in
each
cluster
7
Cluster 1 Cluster 2

9. What
does
this
reveal?
• Cluster
1
exhibits
paMerns
consistent
with
a
commercial
area
• Cluster
2
exhibits
paMerns
consistent
with
less
commercial
and
more
residenHal
area
(or
possibly
mixed)
8

10. The
Central
Business
District
(CBD)
seems
to
have
expanded
9

11. North
Colombo
is
Colombo’s
inner
city
10
Photo: ©Senanayake Bandara - Panoramio

12. Seethawaka
Export
Processing
Zone
(EPZ)
11
Seethawaka EPZ
Photo ©Senanayaka Bandara - Panoramio

13. Future
work
• InvesHgate
more
fine
grained
land
use
categorizaHon
• Use
this
methodology
to
monitor
the
evoluHon
of
urbanizaHon
of
a
region
12