Use of GPS-enabled devices data to analyse commuting flows between Tuscan municipalities

Abstract During the last two decades, we have seen an explosion in the deployment of pervasive systems like cellular networks, GPS devices, and WiFi hotspots that allow us to collect digital information about individual and collective behaviour of people at a very high level of geographical detail and can represent an extremely useful source of data. This is the case of a phenomenon like commuting whose identification and quantification at local level can produce a more detailed depiction of the socio-economic environment in which people live. In this paper we investigate to what extent big data collected from GPS-enabled devices, installed on private vehicles for insurance purposes could be a support in producing estimates of systematic commuting flows between municipalities in Tuscany.