Štefan GÁBOR, Ladislav NOVOTNÝ

Využitie dát Google Location History pre výskum časopriestorových vzorcov pohybu v mestskom prostredí

Gábor, Š., Novotný, L.: Using Google Location History Data to Explore Spatio-Temporal Patterns of Movement in Urban Areas. Kartografické listy, 2026, 34 (1).

Abstract: Understanding individual mobility patterns in urban environments requires precise spatiotemporal data that capture the dynamics of everyday movement. Google Location History (GLH) repre-sents a promising source of voluntarily provided geographic information with high spatial and temporal resolution. Despite growing scientific interest, GLH data are still rarely employed for detailed identification of commuting flows within cities. This study demonstrates the potential of GLH for urban mobility research using the example of the city of Košice. The analysis is based on a three-year dataset (2022–2024) from one anonymized user, following a workflow that in-cludes data extraction and preprocessing in R, spatial transformation into a regular grid, and ap-plication of Space Time Pattern Mining tools in ArcGIS Pro. By employing a 2D space-time cube and time series clustering methods, we identified stable spatial locations of daily activity and con-sistent commuting patterns. The results suggest that GLH can reveal the temporal stability of in-dividual mobility patterns and identify key locations of daily activity for the observed user. The study provides a methodological contribution demonstrating the suitability of GLH for urban mo-bility research while opening avenues for the development of new analytical approaches to the study of individual movement in urban environments.

Keywords: Google Location History, spatio-temporal analysis, urban mobility, time-series clustering, Košice