Quantifying crowd size with mobile phone and <i>Twitter</i> data
Royal Society Open SciencePublished 1 May 2015Open access
Federico Botta, Helen Susannah Moat, Tobias Preis
Citations123
SJR quartileQ1
SJR score0.80
SNIP1.12
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TL;DR
There is a strong relationship between the number of people in restricted areas and activity recorded by mobile phone providers and the online service Twitter, which suggests that data generated through interactions with mobile phone networks and the Internet may allow us to gain valuable measurements of the current state of society.
Abstract
Being able to infer the number of people in a specific area is of extreme importance for the avoidance of crowd disasters and to facilitate emergency evacuations. Here, using a football stadium and an airport as case studies, we present evidence of a strong relationship between the number of people in restricted areas and activity recorded by mobile phone providers and the online service Twitter. Our findings suggest that data generated through our interactions with mobile phone networks and the Internet may allow us to gain valuable measurements of the current state of society.
Keywords
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