QZTool – Automatically generated Origin-Destination Matrices from Cell Phone Trajectories

Models describing human travel patterns are indispensable to plan
and operate road, rail and public transportation networks. For most kind of
analyses in the field of transportation planning, there is a need for origindestination
(OD) matrices, which specify the travel demands between the origin
and destination zones in the network. The preparation of OD matrices is traditionally
a time consuming and cumbersome task. The presented system,
QZTool, reduces the necessary effort as it is capable of generating OD matrices
automatically. These matrices are produced starting from floating phone data
(FPD) as raw input. This raw input is processed by a Hadoop-based big data
system. A graphical user interface allows for an easy usage and hides the complexity
from the operator. For evaluation, we compare a FDP-based OD matrix
to an OD matrix created by a traffic demand model. Results show that both matrices
agree to a high degree, indicating that FPD-based OD matrices can be
used to create new, or to validate or amend existing OD matrices.