Using Cellphone Data to Understand Park Use

Park planning has become increasingly data-driven. The use of location data from mobile devices is one of the latest trends in data-driven park planning, as previously reported in this article. Specifically, the use of such data for studies on park visitors can be more affordable and accurate than conducting in-person counts and/or surveys at parks.

In this article by Alexa Battler, researchers at the University of Toronto explain how anonymous cellphone data can help park planners to strike a better balance between the needs of people and wildlife. Their study, published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, is among the first to use anonymous GPS data from smartphones to track how people interact with green spaces, potentially impacting biodiversity.

GPS data has been used to gauge people’s activities in green spaces before, but most of the studies have relied on volunteers signing up to have their information used, painting a limited or partial picture. For this study, researchers relied on data from Mapbox, a company that creates custom maps for major apps including Facebook, Snapchat and Uber. Users’ identities are kept anonymous while their locations are gathered every two hours. The information is typically used for marketing and business purposes, such as selecting the busiest hubs to place a new franchise.

The Mapbox data allowed researchers to track which qualities of parks attracted the most people, including recreation amenities such as picnic benches and trails, and types of land coverage such as forests and swamps.  For more information, please read the source article.