Mobile phone data analysis

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The context:

The Région Sud, a French public administration in charge (not only) of the public transportation service, wants to investigate the use of mobile network data (MND) to understand the transportation needs and behaviours across the South-East region of France. They launched a public tender in May 2019 on this topic. Our team (Orange for the data collection, OpenDC for the data analysis and CDVIA for the mobility expertise) won the project and completed it in a challenging 6-month time frame.

What we did:

We worked as a team with Orange to define the optimal zoning system given the cell phone coverage in the region and the availability of validation sources. We set up a list of validation tests to give confidence to our client that MND could be trusted when converted into mobility indicators. We have collected complementary datasets for validation but also for extra insights. In particular, travel times by private vehicles and public transportation have been collected, across the whole region, at different days and time of the day. These travel times have been used together with the MND to describe the demand versus supply globally and locally across the region.

The value for our client:

Our client is now pioneer in France in the use of MND to understand mobility needs at a large scale. Specific insights have been given, such as demand time-profiles at very specific days and locations, such as tourist areas during bank or school holidays. Volumes and estimation of mode shares are now available for all origin-destination pairs in the region. Our client knows now which desire line should be prioritized to densify or develop new PT network.