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Cited by 6,059

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Understanding individual human mobility patterns

Open access
González, Marta C., Hidalgo, César A., Barabási, Albert-László·2008·Nature
DOI 10.1038/nature06958
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Abstract

Despite their importance for urban planning, traffic forecasting and the spread of biological and mobile viruses, our understanding of the basic laws governing human motion remains limited owing to the lack of tools to monitor the time-resolved location of individuals. Here we study the trajectory of 100,000 anonymized mobile phone users whose position is tracked for a six-month period. We find that, in contrast with the random trajectories predicted by the prevailing Lévy flight and random walk models, human trajectories show a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity, each individual being characterized by a time-independent characteristic travel distance and a significant probability to return to a few highly frequented locations. After correcting for differences in travel distances and the inherent anisotropy of each trajectory, the individual travel patterns collapse into a single spatial probability distribution, indicating that, despite the diversity of their travel history, humans follow simple reproducible patterns. This inherent similarity in travel patterns could impact all phenomena driven by human mobility, from epidemic prevention to emergency response, urban planning and agent-based modelling.

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Metadata

Authors
González, M. C., Hidalgo, C. A., & Barabási, A.-L.
Venue
Nature
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2008-06-05
Volume
453
Issue
7196
Pages
779-782
ISSN
  • 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
  • 1476-4687
DOI
10.1038/nature06958
OpenAlex
W1982300822
Cited by
6,059
References
2
FWCI
573.58
Type
journal article
Language
en
Update notices
erratum (2009-03-12)
Open access
green
Licence

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Understanding individual human mobility patterns. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/nature06958
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González, M. C., Hidalgo, C. A., & Barabási, A.-L. (2008). Understanding individual human mobility patterns. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06958

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