Around 50% of the global population live in metropolitan areas, and this is likely to grow to 75% by 2050. Across Europe cities are stable aggregates with large expanding suburbs. These metropolitan areas need to grow in an efficient, sustainable, and resilient way. Efficient because an efficient economy of scale is required for such conglomerates in order to work, sustainable in their use of resources (in particular for food, water and energy) and resilient to disasters, both natural and man-made, either local (e.g. local floods and storms). Mobility is key to this. Unfortunately, mobility in metropolitan areas is becoming more and more complex due to the increasing availability of different means of transport and the more erratic patterns of the everyday life compared to decades ago. New methods are needed to help city managers to understand mobility and to act according to needs which change dynamically. 

In this talk I will present technologies and methodologies for large scale acquisition of detailed mobility patterns via citizen involvement. They enable understanding multimodal mobility at a level of precision and granularity that responds to the challenges above. 

Our methodologies are currently in use by hundreds of thousands of people in England.