Analisando padrões de mobilidade a partir de redes sociais e de dados sociodemográficos abertos.

Abstract

The constant need for improvements in life quality of inhabitants of big cities, together with the increasing urbanization of these centers, demands the use of technological means for a better understanding of the dynamics of urban centers and how their inhabitants interact in these environments. In this sense, the adoption of electronic devices equipped with GPS systems, the human need for communication and, more recently, for Internet connection, have brought new research opportunities and great challenges, especially due to the huge amount of data generated by social networks. Several studies have used this data to carry out research that seek to understand traces of human behavior, especially with respect to urban mobility and trajectories. However, much of the research that uses georeferenced data are restricted to spatial and temporal dimensions, disregarding other aspects that may influence human mobility. This work proposes a model capable of extracting mobility patterns from georeferenced messages of social networks and correlating them with social, economic and demographic indicators provided by government agencies, seeking to analyze which factors may impact in urban mobility. To evaluate the model, we used messages posted on Twitter and a set of social indicators, both related to the city of London. The results revealed the existence of correlations between mobility patterns and social indicators, especially those related to employment and income conditions, as well as ethnic and religious characteristics of the individuals under study.