WiFi breadcrumbs reveal pedestrian patterns

07. By using anonymized WiFi data collected on campus, EPFL researchers were able to analyze students' motivations in a fundamental activity: eating. More broadly, this method offers a low-cost way of studying pedestrians' comings, goings and destinations. Pizza or pasta, Thai or Indian, quick burger or sit-down restaurant? On a campus with a population of 13,000, there is no shortage of eateries. How do people choose one? Setting aside the traditional survey approach, EPFL researchers looked at the traces left by pedestrians as they passed WiFi access points. These virtual stones deposited by streams of people are worth their weight in gold when it comes to understanding and predicting the behavior of people who use the pedestrian infrastructure. Provided we can read the data, that is.
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