The Future Mobility Survey: Experiences in developing a smartphone-based travel survey in Singapore

Authors

Caitlin Cottrill Doyle
Francisco Câmara Pereira
Fang Zhao
Inês Dias
Hock Beng Lim
Moshe Ben-Akiva
Christopher Zegras

Abstract

The Future Mobility Survey (FMS) is a smartphone-based prompted-recall travel survey that aims to support data collection initiatives for transport modeling purposes. This paper details the considerations that have gone into its development, including the smartphone apps for iPhone and Android platforms, the online activity diary and user interface, and the background intelligence for processing collected data into activity locations and travel traces. We discuss the various trade-offs regarding user comprehension, resource use, and participant burden, including findings from usability tests and a pilot study. We find that close attention should be paid to the simplicity of the user interaction, determinations of activity locations (such as the false positive/false negative trade-off in their automatic classification), and the clarity of interactions in the activity diary. The FMS system design and implementation provides pragmatic, useful insights into the development of similar platforms and approaches for travel/activity surveys.

Keywords

Smartphone suveys, ubiquitous computing, transport modeling

Subject

Smartphone suveys, ubiquitous computing, transport modeling

Journal

Transport Research Record, TRB 2013

Cited by

Year 2013 : 4 citations

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