Seminar Vol. 167

Title: Urban Research Using Mobile Phone Data

Speaker: Yuming Fu, National University of Singapore

Time: July 12th, 2019 13:30–15:00

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (IESR, JNU College of Economics)

About the speaker:

Yuming Fu is a Dean's Chair Professor in the Department of Real Estate, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore. His research in the areas of urban economics, regional economic development, real estate market and housing studies has been published in leading academic journals such as American Economic Review, Management Science, Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Regional Science, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Real Estate Economics, and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. He championed multidisciplinary research to tackle urban challenges during his tenure as the school’s vice dean of research from 2010 to 2016. He is a current member of the university’s expert panel on humanities and social sciences and a Fellow of Weimer School of Advanced Studies in Real Estate and Land Economics. He served on the board of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA) and is an editorial board member of the association's journal Real Estate Economics. Yuming Fu obtained a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia.

Abstract:

This talk discusses the use of mobile phone data for urban research. Mobile phone data can provide dynamic maps of population density and person-to-person contacts in a city, revealing social interactions in a spatial context. We use a sample of mobile phone data from Singapore to describe social hotspots and social connectivity of residents in the city. We further examine the spatial distribution of these social hotspots in relation to location attributes and the social connectivity of the residents in relation to their access to the social hotspots. We explore the urban planning implications of our findings.