Massive open mobile phone derived human mobility data is coming to the EU

@ Geomob · Berlin

Egor Kotov

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

June 4, 2025

Egor Kotov

  • 15+ years of experience working with spatial data

  • 10+ years of experience working with mobile phone based mobility data

  • Developer and maintainer of R packages

  • Not affiliated with any of the companies or entities mentioned in this presentation from this point on


The Moscow Urban Forum 2016 - “Moscow: heading towards polycentricity”


Mobile Tartu Conference 2020 - “The role of land use and transport accessibility in trip generation: evidence from the Moscow mobile phone data”

Hello from Rostock

I came from Rostock to do this talk at Geomob Berlin

Contents

  • What do we know about human mobility?

  • Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

  • The future of human mobility in the EU

What do we know about human mobility?

Survey-based human mobility

European Labour Force Surveys

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/microdata/european-union-labour-force-survey
Image source: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/345175/17780010/2021-NUTS-3-map-ES.pdf

Survey-based human mobility

German Mobility Survey

Source: https://www.mobilitaet-in-deutschland.de/

Census-based human mobility

UK Census

Source: https://commute.datashine.org.uk/

Census-based human mobility

UK Census

Source: https://commute.datashine.org.uk/

Register-based human mobility

Netherlands Register Data

Source: https://www.flowmap.blue/1Oe3zM219uSfJ3sjdRT90SAK2kU3xIvzdcCW6cwTsAuc
Data: https://opendata.cbs.nl/#/CBS/nl/dataset/83628NED/table?dl=F076

IOT GPS Data

The Volkswagen leak

Source: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-volksdaten-von-volkswagen

Mobile Apps + Mobile Network GPS Data

App usage by Orange customers in France

Image source: Martínez-Durive et al. (2023)

Mobile phone data

Flowminder

Mobile phone data for humanitarian and development efforts in low- and middle-income countries

Source: https://www.flowminder.org/what-we-do/population-distribution-and-mobility-analysis#data-applications

Flowminder Example

Effects of gang violence in Haïti

Source: https://unstats.un.org/bigdata/events/2022/conference/presentations/day2/panel1c/5.%20Thomas%20-%20Flowminder%20-%20UNSD%20Conference%20on%20Big%20Data%20Panel%20%E2%80%93%202022.pdf

Flowminder Software

FlowKit - privacy preserving mobile phone data aggregation

Learn more: https://github.com/Flowminder/FlowKit,
https://www.flowminder.org/what-we-do/mobile-data-partnerships/flowkit

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

3500+ zones across Spain and beyond

Data by Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible (MITMS) (2024)

Based on 13 million customers of Orange Spain, expanded to full population of Spain

Data interface

Data visusalization

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

~ 5 years of daily hourly flows

Data by Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible (MITMS) (2024)

Based on 13 million customers of Orange Spain, expanded to full population of Spain

Data interface

Data visusalization

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

View the dashboard at https://data.transportes.gob.es/public/mov-diaria-mensual

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

View the dashboard at https://data.transportes.gob.es/public/mov-provincial

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

View the dashboard at https://mapas-movilidad.transportes.gob.es/?date=2025-04-16T22

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

Academic research

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/spanishoddata-paper-supplement
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15207374

Spanish Open Mobility Big Data

Effects of human mobility on dispersal of disease-transmitting mosquitoes

Uses Labour Force Survey data
(Lucati et al. 2022)

Builds on previous research using mobile phone based data
(Kotov, Bartumeus, and Palmer 2024)

spanishoddata R package

spanishoddata

access Spanish Open Mobility Big Data from R

Source: https://ropenspain.github.io/spanishoddata/articles/v1-2020-2021-mitma-data-codebook.html

spanishoddata - access open human mobility data

A package with many companions

spanishoddata flowmapblue flowmapper duckdb

Detailed documentation

Logos are the property of their respective owners.

spanishoddata use cases

Split work and non-work trips

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/2024-30DayMapChallenge

spanishoddata use cases

Split into different trip types

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/spanishoddata-paper-supplement, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15207374

spanishoddata use cases

Split into different trip types

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/spanishoddata-paper-supplement, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15207374

spanishoddata use cases

Valencia flood (DANA) in October 2024

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/2024-30DayMapChallenge

spanishoddata use cases

Valencia flood (DANA) in October 2024

The share of people who have not spent the night at home.

Source: https://github.com/e-kotov/2024-30DayMapChallenge

spanishoddata use cases

Anntennas were offline - Facebook shows a slightly different picture

Source: https://population-europe.eu/research/policy-insights/harnessing-digital-data-strengthen-disaster-response-valencias-2024-floods

Multi-MNO Project

Multi-MNO Project

Source: https://cros.ec.europa.eu/landing-page/multi-mno-project

Multi-MNO Project

Mobility data aggregation using unified methodology

Source: https://cros.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2023-12/20231109_dimeitdg_mnoposition_paper_ricciato_ho%20%281%29.pdf
Learn more: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-statistical-reports/w/ks-ft-23-001

Multi-MNO Project

How it works

Source https://cros.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2024-02/20240226_MultiMNO_2021-0400-internal-meeting-MNOs-ricciato.pdf

Multi-MNO Software

https://github.com/eurostat/multimno

Source https://cros.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2024-02/20240226_MultiMNO_2021-0400-internal-meeting-MNOs-ricciato.pdf

Multi-MNO Outputs

What to expect?

Source https://cros.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2024-02/20240226_MultiMNO_2021-0400-internal-meeting-MNOs-ricciato.pdf

Get in touch

Egor Kotov


ekotov.pro

spanishoddata rJavaEnv rdocdump more…

Logos are the property of their respective owners.

References

Kotov, Egor, Frederic Bartumeus, and John Palmer. 2024. “Effects of Human Mobility on the Spread of Disease-Transmitting Mosquitoes in Spain: Insights from Mobile Phone Data.” Abstracts of the ICA 7: 78. https://ica-abs.copernicus.org/articles/7/78/2024/ica-abs-7-78-2024.pdf.
Lucati, Federica, Sarah Delacour, John R. B. Palmer, Jenny Caner, Aitana Oltra, Claudia Paredes-Esquivel, Simone Mariani, et al. 2022. “Multiple Invasions, Wolbachia and Human-Aided Transport Drive the Genetic Variability of Aedes Albopictus in the Iberian Peninsula.” Scientific Reports 12 (1): 20682. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-24963-3.
Martínez-Durive, Orlando E., Sachit Mishra, Cezary Ziemlicki, Stefania Rubrichi, Zbigniew Smoreda, and Marco Fiore. 2023. “The NetMob23 Dataset: A High-resolution Multi-region Service-level Mobile Data Traffic Cartography.” arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.06933.
Ministerio de Transportes y Movilidad Sostenible (MITMS). 2024. “Estudio de La Movilidad Con Big Data (Study of Mobility with Big Data).” https://www.transportes.gob.es/ministerio/proyectos-singulares/estudio-de-movilidad-con-big-data.

For additional resources and references, see the footnotes on individual slides.