Apr 11, 2018 | 11:00—12:00
Mobile phone data has proven to be an interesting data source for the study of human mobility, urban systems, regional economic development, or even health. Many advances in the study of mobile phone data base on network theory but, often, aspects of space are neglected or ill understood. In this talk, I will discuss several applications of network theory to mobile phone data and illustrate how space does or does not play a role in their interpretation and the way we will have to pursue future research.
Maarten Vanhoof is a PhD-student at the Open Lab in Newcastle University and related with the SENSE department (Social Economics of Networks and Services) of Orange Labs France. He mixes ideas from Geography, Sociology and Design with computational and big data techniques in order to understand the interplay between human mobility, social networks, and cities. For his doctoral study, he’s investigating one of the largest mobile phone datasets in the world together with multiple renowned research partners (MIT, ETH Zürich, UCL, etc.). He holds a Master of Science in Geography and Master of Arts in Cultural Studies from the Katholieke University of Leuven. As a Belgian he is almost perfectly trilingual (Dutch, French and English) and, of course, he just loves beer and football.