Travel / Activity Studies
GeoStats' consulting and technology services provide end-to-end solutions for household travel surveys, physical activity studies, and multi-day travel behavior analyses. Household Travel SurveysDuring the late 1990's, several pilot studies were conducted in the U.S. and Europe to examine the potential applications of GPS technology in the collection of travel behavior data. As a result of these successful pilots, GeoStats has conducted GPS augments for sub-samples of many large-scale regional and statewide household travel surveys, including recent surveys in Washington DC (MWCOG), Baltimore (BMC), and Chicago (CMAP). In each of these studies, GPS data were collected concurrently with paper-based travel diaries used to record and report travel behaviors of the participants. The GPS data were compared with the reported travel data to generate trip rate correction factors for those participants in the larger samples with similar socio-demographic and trip-making characteristics. In the near future, it is anticipated that traditional travel surveys will transition to GPS-only methodologies, which may include prompted recall techniques leveraging the GPS data.
Physical Activity, Health & Exposure StudiesWearable GPS data loggers can be used to collect detailed data for all modes of travel, including walking, bicycling, and transit. When worn in tandem with accelerometers, measures of travel, physical activity, and the built environment can be generated. GeoStats is currently involved in two physical activity studies – one focused on visually impaired veterans and another on persons moving into Atlantic Station (a new mixed-used urban community in Atlanta). Passive GPS loggers can also be worn with other environmental / pollutant sensors to obtain detailed exposure measures within a geographic context. Multi-day Travel Behavior AnalysesThere has been great interest within the transportation planning community to study variation in travel patterns across days of the week, as well as across seasons and years. In the past, long-term travel surveys have been infeasible due to the heavy burden placed on participants in reporting travel for extended time periods. However, the passive nature of GPS data logging allows for lengthy data collection periods with minimal respondent burden. GeoStats has been involved in several studies that have evaluated long-term GPS datasets that were originally collected for other purposes that can later be mined for travel behavior details and that allow for multi-day variability analyses.
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