Next place prediction by understanding mobility patterns

Abstract

As technology to connect people across the world is advancing, there should be corresponding advancement in taking advantage of data that is generated out of such connection. To that end, next place prediction is an important problem for mobility data. In this paper we propose several models using dynamic Bayesian network (DBN). Idea behind development of these models come from typical daily mobility patterns a user have. Three features (location, day of the week (DoW), and time of the day (ToD)) and their combinations are used to develop these models. Knowing that not all models work well for all situations, we developed three combined models using least entropy, highest probability and ensemble. Extensive performance study is conducted to compare these models over two different mobility data sets: a CDR data and Nokia mobile data which is based on GPS. Results show that least entropy and highest probability DBNs perform the best.