Mobility metrics for Glasgow City Region 2019-2021

The mobility metrics dataset was created using mobile phone application data from Huq and Tamoco data. The aim of the dataset is to produce small-area aggregate measures of mobility over time. The data covers Glasgow city-region with results broken down by Intermediate Zone (417 in the city-region) from 1st July 2019 – 31st December 2021 (2.5 years) with results aggregated quarterly (10 periods).

The Mobility is measured following Cuebiq Mobility Index approach. Mobility analysis is limited to mobile phone users determined to live within the Glasgow city-region (see technical report ‘Calculating home location for mobile phone data’ for details. This report is sent with the dataset).

Access and Restrictions

Data are available for non-commercial, academic research by UK-based academics under an End User Licence. Note: both Huq and Tamoco end user licences must be signed to access this dataset.

For each mobile phone user with a home location, on each day:

1. Subset available data points for the user if they are active.
2. Add a point for their home location so that is always present
3. Draw a bounding box around the remaining observations
4. Measure the diagonal distance (D) of the bounding box
5. Device Mobility (DM) = log10 (D + 1) [addition of 1 to avoid log(0) probs].

For each Intermediate Zone and quarter, the Mobility Index (MI) = weighted median of Device Mobility (DM).

The weight applied to each user is based on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile of their home Datazone and the Council in which they live.

Other measures recorded for each Intermediate Zone and quarter:

Number of users (N) – used in the calculation of median for zone/period [to allow if to include a minimum threshold for reporting] Number of Active days – how many active days were there in the quarter, where each day can have multiple active users. MImean = mean (DM) MI25 = 25th percentile value (DM) MI75 = 75th percentile value (DM)

This data uses secondary data from mobile phone application use provided by Huq and Tamoco. Further information can be located on the UBDC website about these data sources.

Huq and Tamoco licence agreements apply

available to PHD students and academic researchers based in UK higher education institutions and public sector organisations for non-commercial, academic research purposes or to support policy and operational decision making only.

usage for teaching purposes is not permitted.