[From ACM TechNews
http://technews.acm.org/archives.cfm?fo=2012-04-apr/apr-18-2012.html]
Crunch Commuter Data to Track Changing Communities
New Scientist (04/16/12) Jacob Aron
University of Cambridge researchers compared commuter data with
official measures of social deprivation and found that a community's
prosperity is reflected in the movements of its residents. London's
rail commuters have cards with anonymized identification numbers,
which enabled the researchers to determine where commuters lived based
on picking the two most visited stations for each person, assuming
that these corresponded to home and work locations. The researchers
then compared the number of visitors an area received with the Index
of Multiple Deprivation, a composite measure based on census data that
weighs factors such as income, health, and crime levels in a
particular community. The researchers found that more deprived areas
were visited more often and that people from deprived areas did the
most traveling. The results enable policy-makers to respond more
rapidly to changing social dynamics within a city than by relying on
census data alone, says Cambridge researcher Daniele Quercia. The
researchers also developed UrbanOption, an online game that tests
which places stick in people's minds. The program shows users a random
Google Street View image of a location and then asks them to match it
to the nearest station or borough.
[Behind paywall]
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428605.400-crunch-commuter-data-to-track-changing-communities.html-Glen Newton
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