Credit cards help understand urban issues
Credit Card Records (CCRs) are currently used to measure similarities in purchasing activity, but for the first time researchers have used the data along with Call Detailed Records (CDRs) to understand the daily rhythms of human mobility and communication.
Combining both reveals patterns in citizens’ socio-economic behaviours.
For the study, published today in Nature Communications, researchers used anonymous and aggregated credit card data from a major city, with the results allowing them to group the urban population into six clusters.
Older women dominated the ‘Homemaker’ cluster and tended to have the least expenditure and mobility, with their core transaction being grocery shops. The ‘Commuters’ cluster was mainly men who lived the farthest from the city centre.
Young people can be split into two groups, with the younger having taxis as their core transaction. The slightly older group also has computer networks and information services, with a higher than average expenditure and operating mainly within the city centre.
The research, conducted in collaboration with Grandata and UN Global Pulse, is part of a wider project funded by the United Nations Foundation and the Gates Foundation to investigate the economic, social and health status of women and girls in developing countries.
Lead researcher Dr Riccardo Di Clemente (UCL Centre for Advance Spatial Analysis), said: “Our approach brings together human mobility behavioural dynamics with socio-economic and demographic information.”