arXiv Machine Learning

Paris as a 15-Minute City: An Explainable AI Perspective

arXiv:2608. 00815v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The 15-minute city promotes access to everyday services within a short walk or bicycle ride, but its relationship with observed mobility remains difficult to quantify.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 2

Do LLMs Know Your Neighborhood? Auditing LLM Priors for Neighborhood-Level Mobility Prediction and Structural Alignment

The study investigates whether large language models (LLMs) can predict neighborhood-level human mobility without training data. Using anonymized Cuebiq data across four U.S. metropolitan areas, the authors compare zero‑shot LLM predictions to supervised baselines for various mobility outcomes and assess structural alignment with empirical trends. Results show supervised models outperform LLMs (average accuracy 0.580 vs. 0.435), with LLMs relying on coarse, stable priors that may exhibit biased treatment of protected-group predictors.

By Saad Mohammad Abrar, Eesha Kurella, Arnav Dadarya, Naman Awasthi, Kazi Tasnim Zinat, Vanessa Frias-Martinez
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 7

BER-PEF: Unified Human Mobility Predictability Evaluation via Bayes Error Rate Estimation

BER-PEF is a Bayes‑error‑rate‑based framework that transforms BER estimation into human mobility predictability estimation, enabling comparison of different estimators even when ground truth predictability is not observable. It maps various data types—symbolic sequences, numeric trajectories, contextual features, and learned representations—into a shared feature–label space and evaluates estimator outputs along controlled perturbation curves against a common predictability reference interval. Experiments on datasets such as Foursquare NYC/TKY, GeoLife, and T‑Drive show that several BER‑based estimators outperform existing methods on symbolic sequences and numeric trajectories, and that aggregating evidence across multiple perturbation levels yields a more reliable basis for selecting estimators.

By En Xu, Jingtao Ding, Zhiwen Yu, Yong Li
arXiv Machine Learning
1d ago

Relative Transitions, Not Absolute Destinations: A Transfer-and-Ground Framework for Target-Trajectory-Free Human Mobility Generation

The paper introduces Nomad, a transfer-and-ground framework for generating human mobility trajectories without target-city trajectory data. It learns relative transitions from source cities using POI attributes and then grounds these transitions onto a target city’s POI map via a behavior graph and exploration–return walk. Experiments across ten cities show Nomad improves trajectory fidelity and downstream utility by roughly 15% and 3% respectively over adaptation baselines.

By Yidi Wang, Yunhe Zhang, Bangchao Deng, Dingqi Yang, Pengyang Wang
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Modelling daily activity patterns from mobile phone location data via deep representation learning

The paper introduces the Activity Chain Encoder (ACE), a self‑supervised deep learning model that transforms passively collected mobile phone location data into daily activity representations. ACE integrates pre‑trained urban embeddings, visit timing, and duration, using a Transformer to capture the sequential structure of stays, and is trained via masked activity modelling and contrastive learning without explicit activity labels. The resulting user‑level profiles are clustered and interpreted with temporal‑functional patterns and Census demographics, revealing six distinct weekday activity‑pattern groups in London that differ in daily rhythms, urban contexts, and demographic characteristics.

By Xinglei Wang, Junyuan Liu, Guangsheng Dong, Zichao Zeng, Stephen Law, James Haworth, Tao Cheng
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 18

In-Context Learning to Assess Built Environment Impacts on Perceived Neighborhood Walkability Among Mobility-impaired Older Adults

arXiv:2608. 14663v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As global populations age, enhancing neighborhood walkability through inclusive urban design is important for mitigating built environment (BE) barriers that discourage physical activity and social participation among older adults.

By Houhao Liang, Kresimir Friganovic, Joanne Kua, Noor Hafizah Ismail, Su Su, Bryan Yijia Tan, Navrag B. Singh, Panos Mavros
arXiv AI
Jul 7

From Mobile Data to Business Insights: An End-to-End Analytics Framework for Large-Scale Urban Mobility Analysis and Decision Support

arXiv:2607. 03394v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Real time location data derived from mobile applications is a powerful tool for addressing various urban challenges, including tourism planning, parking management, bus route optimization, and resource allocation.

By Thiago Andrade, Shazia Tabassum, Miguel E. P. Silva, Ricardo Dinis, Joao Gama
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 11

TS-Mob: Social and Geographical-Aware Time Series Foundation-Model Framework for Human Mobility Prediction

arXiv:2507. 00945v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Short-term forecasting of aggregated human mobility flows supports urban planning, intelligent transportation systems, and emergency response, yet existing models often require substantial mobility history and learn spatial structure implicitly through grids or graphs.

By Massimiliano Luca, Ciro Beneduce, Bruno Lepri