Smarter decisions and A/B testing in the real world

Many decision-makers in areas such as urban planning, public transport, retail and hospitality need to make decisions based on historical surveys or expensive, small-sample observational studies rather than on current, representatives data. By using anonymized and aggregated mobile data, it’s possible to make decisions based current data from a large statistical sample. This enables more data-driven decisions and increased impact from investments.

“Telia Crowd Insights provides a more comprehensive decision basis than other types of research such as travel surveys. Data from the mobile network is created continuously, around the clock, year round, and shows actual behavior. This means that we can compare data from today with, for example, data from a year ago. This has many advantages. For example, during the Corona pandemic we have beenhelping public health authorities in the Nordics to produce national data on how the population is traveling currently, compared to before the corona outbreak, or at the same time last year. During Easter, when strict recommendations not to travel from home regions in Sweden were in place, we were able to compare the travel patterns from last Easter. This enables authorities to evaluate the results andtake appropriate action going forward” says Elin Allison, Head of New Product, Data Insights, at Telia.

For a city or municipality, this type of data can help develop the tourism industry by enabling them to understand where tourists visit and where they travel from. This data can be combined with their own or third-party data sources to understand how to make the city even more attractive as a destination. Public transport can become more efficient through insights about where and how far people travel and authorities can see trends in population volume and more quickly implement appropriate measures. With the help of AI, hopefully mobile data can also more effectively increase the experience of security in a city in the near future.

“We have a collaboration with Malmö City in an AI project with the goal to see how we can measure "perceived personal safey" in different parts of the city. The project also includes AI Sustainability Center, researchers from Linköping and Lund University, human rights activists and lawyers so that we can ensure legal aspects, ethics, risk and the technical solution are all taken into consideration. Our ethical guidelines on how data can be used now and in the future are of course very important elements in all our new projects”, says Elin Allison.

Facts: Telia Crowd Insights

Telia Crowd Insights is a service from Telia that analyzes anonymized and aggregated mobile network data, adjusted to represent the entire population of Sweden. This means that you can see behaviors and movement needs in society, suchs as travel patterns and how we move. All data is automatically anonymized and aggregated completely before use to protect personal privacy. The only thing analyzed is movement patterns for groups, disconnected from individual and person.