Discovery of Urban Mobility Patterns

The detection of mobility patterns is crucial for the development of urban planning policies and the design of business strategies. Some of the proposed approaches to carry out this task use surveys, registration data in social networks, or mobile phone data. Although it is possible to infer through the latter the place of residence of the clients and estimate the probability of visiting a store, it cannot be guaranteed, based on this information, that a purchase was actually made. This paper develops a proposal for the discovery of urban mobility patterns by adapting the trade areas approach using bank transaction data. The main advantages of our approach are the estimation of the probability of purchasing in a shop showing the importance of taking into account the business category and including individuals of all social classes. Likewise, different metrics were used to determine commercial attractiveness according to the category to which the business belongs. Some of the real-world benefits of this work include, but are not limited to, serving as a tool to facilitate business decision-making such as the location of a new retail store or the design of marketing campaigns.