Travel diaries, GPS loggers and Smartphone applications in mapping the daily mobility patterns of students in an urban environment

Mapping the daily spatial mobility of university students in an urban environment is the focus of this paper. It uses the city of České Budějovice in the Czech Republic as a case study, employing three different research tools – travel diaries, GPS loggers and Smartphone applications. We focus our attention on the analysis of spatial patterns of mobility using basic mobility indicators (distance, number of daily trips, time spent mobility), travel behaviours (use of transport modes) and the detection of time-space bundles (spaces of concentration of particular time-space trajectories) within the city. We identified four main time-space bundles. Then we compare the three main research methods according to their tracking accuracy and informative value. The Smartphone applications (using the A-GPS technology) provided the best results for the spatial mobility of respondents, although the travel diaries method is still unique due to the extent of some socio-demographic and transport characteristics.