Unlocking the Power of Mobile Phone Application Data to Accelerate Transport Decarbonisation (Short Paper)

Decarbonising transport is crucial in addressing climate change and achieving the Net Zero target. However, limitations arising from traditional data sources and methods obstruct the provision of individual travel information with comprehensive travel modes, high spatiotemporal granularity and updating frequency for achieving transport decarbonisation. Mobile phone application data, an essentially new form of data, can provide valuable travel information after effective mining and assist in progress monitoring, policy evaluation, and system optimisation in transport decarbonisation. This paper proposes a standardised methodology to unlock the power of mobile phone application data for supporting transport decarbonisation. Three typical cases are employed to demonstrate the capabilities of the generated individual multimodal dataset, including monitoring Londoners’ 20-minute active travel target, transport GHGs emissions and their contributors, and evaluating small-scale transport interventions. The paper also discusses the limitations of mobile phone application data, such as issues surrounding data privacy and regulation.