Online Seminar Talk

Modeling Human Mobility Patterns from Big Geodata

Yihong Yuan
Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography, January 18, 2022

Yihong Yuan from the Texas State University discusses the strategies, techniques, and uncertainty when applying big geo-data to human mobility modeling and travel behavior analysis.

Abstract

In recent decades, modeling human mobility patterns has become an important research topic in various fields such as computational physics, urban planning, intelligent transport systems, and geographic information science. The growing availability of location-aware devices, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and smart phones, has provided new challenges and opportunities for planners and policy makers to analyze, model, and predict human mobility patterns. Commonly used datasets include (but are not limited to) georeferenced mobile phone data, location-based social media check-ins, Bluetooth tracking data, and floating car GPS locations. This presentation discusses the strategies, techniques, and uncertainty when applying big geo-data to human mobility modeling and travel behavior analysis.

About

Dr. Yihong Yuan received her Ph.D. in Geography and M.A. in Statistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and her B.S. in Geographic Information Systems from Peking University, China. She is currently an Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies at Texas State University (Texas State). 

Before joining Texas State, she worked as a visiting researcher at ETH Zurich and as a senior data scientist in the private sector. Dr. Yuan’s research focuses on big geo-data analytics and spatial-temporal knowledge discovery. She is particularly interested in extracting human activity patterns from multiple data sources, such as telecommunication devices and social networking sites. She has an extensive background in analyzing the roles of communication technologies in reshaping today’s connected communities and society. She has led and participated in several projects on human mobility modeling funded by private and governmental organizations, such as the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, the Swiss National Science Foundation, and Microsoft, Inc. She also serves as an expert reviewer for many academic journals, conferences, and funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, Nature (Human Behavior), Annals of the American Association of Geographers, and International Journal of Geographic Information Science. 

www.yuanyihong.com

Register to Take Part

You would like to attend the Online Seminar Talk? You are very welcome. Please register by writing an e-mail to office-zagheni@demogr.mpg.de.

Online Seminar Talk, January, 18th from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. (Rostock time)