How do you create a strategic spatial plan without accurate and up-to-date information on actual land use and population movements?

Without knowing where people live and work or where tourists visit, planning a lively city can be difficult. Mobile positioning data (MPD) provides a unique input to strategic spatial planning on the municipal, regional and national level. As the dataset is continuous, it can reveal changes over time, which is necessary for discovering actual spatial trends in a city.

Land use information is estimated from the population’s mobile activities, which provides aggregated data on the location and number of homes, working time locations, and other regularly visited places. An extensive overview of mobility has proven to be especially useful in urban planning where mobility has the largest impact on the quality of life and sustainability.

Besides helping to quantify regularly visited places, MPD makes it possible to differentiate between locals and regular, temporary, or foreign visitors without putting any burdens on the persons and without violating their data privacy. Connecting and aggregating the places for all individuals gives an overview of population movements inside a territory and of any outside connections, like cross-border commuting and tourism. MPD presents a complete picture of locations and movements that no registry or other mobility dataset can provide.


MPD is the only relevant method for getting data describing movements between various locations.

- Jaak-Aadam Looveer, Tallinn City Planning Department
%study-1%

Mobile Location Data Helps City of Tallinn Understand the Origin and Destination of Movements

The City of Tallinn required mobility data in order to plan several developments in the outer areas of one of its districts, North Tallinn. Based on mobile location data, Positium mapped the entire network of mobility between the sub districts and travel to work outside the districts. Mobile location data provided a look of the whole city over an extended period of time, previously not available or hard to get.

logo of case study partner