On September 12-14, the 17th International Conference on Location Based Services took place in Munich. The conference was held on the roof floor of one of the Technical University of Munich buildings, and from the balconies surrounding it, there was a view of a warm and sunny city hastily preparing for Oktoberfest. Our Mobility Lab was represented by Anto Aasa and Ago Tominga, both of whom also held presentations.
Anto Aasa introduced his investigation on how mobile phones can be used to monitor probationers’ location via a smartphone application, such as MobilityLog. Mobile phones show real potential to replace electronic ankle tags or other similar devices, which are uncomfortable and mostly stigmatise probationers.
Ago Tominga demonstrated how GPS data from a smartphone application could be used to detect trips and travel modes of people. People carry their mobile phones around most of the time while moving around, which enables us to get a longer and more comprehensive view than enabled by traditional travel surveys or traffic counters of how people make their transportation choices: where do people shift from one travel mode, such as car, to another, such as e-scooter? How much do they use different travel modes and what does it depend on? Stay tuned to read the findings from a forthcoming publication.
Our former lab member Olle Järv, currently an Academy Research Fellow at the Digital Geography Lab, University of Helsinki, presented his findings from a study analyzing the impact of Covid-19 restrictions on transnational Estonians in Finland. Many other insightful and inspiring presentations were also held regarding location-based services and privacy.
The conference was arranged by the University of Augsburg under the lead of Professor Jukka Krisp and Professor Liqiu Meng. Check out more from the official conference website.
The Mobility Lab of the University of Tartu is an interdisciplinary research group that studies human mobility and its associations with society and the environment using mobile (big) data.