MIT Researches Map Cell Phone Usage

stlhawkeye writes "MIT researchers with the Mobile Landscape Projects have mapped a city based on cell phone usage. The article includes a map of Graz, Austria with a color-coded overlay indicating cell phone usage in various parts of the city. Using call origin and destination data, they are able to not only reverse-engineer a topographic map of the geography and landscape, but one of phone usage as well. The implications of the research have practical applications in law enforcement, emergency management, and traffic management. There are also, of course, privacy implications."

Comments

Re:Reception...

[Bryansix]

Unfortunatly, I doubt many cell phone companies in the US actually care. Nor do they most likely keep such detailed information on where calls originate from. Even if they do it probably isn't in any usable format.

WHat would be really useful is if phones automatically provided connection quality feedback. Like if you get one bar in an area consistently then the provider would know to look at that are to improve the signal or put up a new tower.

Library Usage Maps

[Anonymous Coward]

The same sort of thing is also being done to map the usage of library books.

Fremont in Seattle is not as Bright

[WillAffleckUW]

The problem with a cell phone usage map of a tech city, let's say Seattle, is that some neighborhoods have evolved beyond cell phones - and even watches.

I live in Fremont, Center of the Universe [or so our neighborhood is claimed as in many public artworks], which is a neighborhood in Seattle, one of the most heavily wired and unwired neighborhoods with DSL and Cable modem and Gigapops galore. Many of us have ditched our electronic cell phone tethers and gone phoneless - because we don't want to be bothered.

We already have wireless on our blackberry's and/or laptops, or might have a pager at most (which includes a handy digital clock so no watch needed).

But on a map like this we won't be shining brightly even tho we're more wired than the rest of Seattle, just because we can't be bothered by crufty cell phones.

So, realize it's only a map of old-world cell technology and not a map of tech centers, since some ultra-techs are not bothering with clunky cell phones.

Terrorist Bombs Triggered By Cell Phones

[technoCon]

I seem to recall reading that most improvised explosive devices used by the Syrian/Saudi/Iranian terrorists deployed in Iraq use cell phone triggers. And I suspect the London bombs were triggered via cell phone, too.

I dearly hope that cell phone usage provide a window into this kind of activity. If the "privacy concerns" of this sort of cell-phone mapping are real, then the US military could exploit this in some kind of Able Danger style data-mining operation that might save some American soldiers' and Iraqi civilians' lives.

I am in two minds when someone cites privacy concerns. Part of me thinks, "it's bad for the government discover info that might falsely cast suspicion upon an innocent party." Another part of me thinks, "it's bad for the government to avert its eyes from information that could thwart an attempt to nuke New York City."

I think you missed a word.

[ladadadada]

I suspect the point of the article was that it can now be done in realtime. The journalist may not have picked up that plotting traffic patterns was old hat but I'm sure the MIT researchers knew. Realtime traffic patterns would have many more uses than daily plots of the traffic patterns particularly in responding to emergencies.

The article uses the words "regular intervals" which doesn't really give us much idea of how often this is but "realtime" suggests that it's somewhere in the realm of every minute or several times a minute.

I like to think that researchers at MIT working on something that journalists report as "cutting edge" probably is cutting edge, however it may not be that the aspect of it the gets all the emphasis is actually the cutting edge part.