Trip Detection
Trip detection segments continuous streams of mobile device location data into individual journeys with defined start points, end points, and routes. It is a fundamental preprocessing step that enables origin-destination analysis, commute studies, and transportation mode classification.
Trip detection is a mobility dataMobility DataMobility data consists of anonymized location observations from mobile devices that capture how people move through g... processing technique that identifies the boundaries between individual journeys in a continuous GPSGPSThe Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system operated by the U.S. Space Force that prov... or cellular location trace. A trip is defined as a period of sustained movement between two stay points, with the origin being the departure location and the destination being the arrival location. Segmenting raw data into discrete trips is essential for meaningful mobility analysis.
How It Works
Trip detection algorithms scan a device's location history for transitions between stationary periods (stay points) and movement periods. When a device departs a stay point—its speed exceeding a threshold and its distance from the previous location growing—a new trip begins. The trip ends when the device decelerates and remains within a small radius at a new location for a minimum dwell timeDwell TimeDwell time measures the duration a visitor spends at a specific location, such as a store, mall, or point of interest.... Algorithms must handle noise from GPSGPSThe Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based navigation system operated by the U.S. Space Force that prov... signal loss (e.g., in tunnels or parking garages), brief intermediate stops (e.g., at traffic lights), and mode transfers (e.g., walking to a bus stop, riding, then walking to a destination).
Applications
Transportation planners use trip detection to build origin-destination matrices that reveal commute corridors and traffic demand. Ride-hailing companies segment driver traces into trips for billing and analytics. Urban researchers study trip length distributions, departure time patterns, and route choice behavior. Retailers analyze trips that include a store visit to understand what other destinations customers combine in the same journey. Trip detection transforms an unstructured stream of coordinates into the structured journey records that power all trip-level mobility analytics.
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