Homogeneity-based zoning using aggregated mobile phone GPS data

This paper proposes a method for constructing zones with homogeneous traffic behavior by applying the REDCAP clustering method (Guo Citation2008) to aggregated and anonymized mobile phone GPS data (AMP data). Conventional traffic surveys often aggregate several township units into a single zone, obscuring differences in traffic behavior and distorting observed patterns. REDCAP dynamically updates spatial adjacency during clustering and processes large-scale datasets, making it suitable for the high-resolution, temporal characteristics of AMP data. The proposed method is compared with the small, basic, and medium zones used in Japan’s metropolitan person trip surveys (PTS). The same number of zones as the PTS basic zone was selected. The coefficient of variation (CV) fell between those of the PTS small and basic zones, indicating that the proposed method can detect more detailed temporal variations in traffic behavior derived from AMP data than administrative-unit-based zone aggregation when the number of zones is held constant.