Results
Title

Mitigating biases in big mobility data: a case study of monitoring large-scale transit systems.

Authors

Wang, Feilong; Ban, Xuegang; Chen, Peng; Liu, Chenxi; Zhao, Rong

Abstract

Big mobility data (BMD) have shown many advantages in studying human mobility and evaluating the performance of transportation systems. However, the quality of BMD remains poorly understood. This study evaluates biases in BMD and develops mitigation methods. Using Google and Apple mobility data as examples, this study compares them with benchmark data from governmental agencies. Spatio-temporal discrepancies between BMD and benchmark are observed and their impacts on transportation applications are investigated, emphasizing the urgent need to address these biases to prevent misguided policymaking. This study further proposes and tests a bias mitigation method. It is shown that the mitigated BMD could generate valuable insights into large-scale public transit systems across 100 US counties, revealing regional disparities of the recovery of transit systems from the COVID-19. This study underscores the importance of caution when using BMD in transportation research and presents effective mitigation strategies that would benefit practitioners.

Subjects

REGIONAL disparities; POLICY sciences; COVID-19; HUMAN experimentation; COUNTIES

Publication

Transportation Letters, 2025, Vol 17, Issue 4, p762

ISSN

1942-7867

Publication type

Academic Journal

DOI

10.1080/19427867.2024.2379703