Using statistics and machine learning to predict your next steps

Increased knowledge on how we move can help us solve societal challenges. It can also create new business opportunities, claims Malte Bieler, Postdoctorate at Kristiania University College.

Predicting people’s whereabouts in the future will provide a better understanding of human mobility, thereby having a direct impact on traffic forecasting, urban planning, epidemiological modelling, autonomous driving, and more.

A greater advance of the mobility sector in Norway requires intelligent transport systems and human mobility predictions, Bieler states. And he discusses how insights can inform policymakers on necessary interventions, as well as how future technology can help assess and predict people’s mobility. Bieler highlights how technological mobility prediction will supply actors with a more competitive edge.

He also brings up the ‘fundamental value of privacy’, and how the Be-Insight team works solely with anonymised data to hide and protect the identity of mobile phone users. In addition, the research team will only receive aggregated information about the whereabouts of a mobile phone user, never an exact location or other identifying data.

You can find Bieler’s complete article here.