Methodology for Assessment of Mobile Telecom Databased Origin-Destination Matrices Accuracy

Origin Destination Matrices (ODM) are standard indicators of population migration used for urban mobility assessment. They represent a population's travel demand (number of trips between two zones) and are considered as the step two of a four-step model of transportation planning process. The research community has already recognized that ODM obtained from different sources might differ and have proposed several assessment methods in order to determine the difference among them. Besides a literature review, this research will provide a methodology for the analysis of similarity of ODMs generated from telecom big data sets compared to those obtained using other measurements. To test and validate the proposed methodology, ODM has been created using telecom big data analytics, where a significant number of anonymized telecom user locations have been analyzed to determine a travel demand. The travel demand characteristic for the same area and the same period of time has in parallel been determined/measured using “the traditional” methodology resulting in the second data set. The paper will provide the analysis results of the comparison of two resulting matrices, lessons learnt, and recommendations that can significantly improve the result correlation rate. Finally, the research has proved that a significant correlation between the resulting matrixes can be achieved if the appropriate preconditions are met.