How and where is the data collected from the city dwellers used in a smart city ?
Answers
Whether tapping a contactless card to take the subway, buying a gift for a loved one or using a smart phone to find the way home, your everyday actions leave behind breadcrumbs of digital information. When these traces are collected and analysed en masse, they can help urban planners to pick up on the daily rhythms of the life of a city and uncover trends about the people who live there.
In a recent study, we developed a new mathematical framework which extracts various spending habits or lifestyles from the digital traces left by credit cards and mobile phone data in Mexico City. We discovered that purchase habits not only related to socio-demographic characteristics such as age, gender, income and mobility – they also related to the places people visit, and the people they call.