We present a methodology to estimate the number of attendees to events happening in the city from cellular network data. In this work we used anonymized Call Detail Records (CDRs) comprising data on where and when users access the cellular network. Our approach is based on two key ideas: (1) we identify the network cells associated to the event location. (2) We verify the attendance of each user, as a measure of whether (s)he generates CDRs during the event, but not during other times. We evaluate our approach to estimate the number of attendees to a number of events ranging from football matches in stadiums to concerts and festivals in open squares. Comparing our results with the best groundtruth data available, our estimates provide a median error of less than 15 of the actual number of attendees.
Can we automatically identify relevant places and events happening in the city from the analysis of mobile network use? In this paper we present a methodology to discover events from human mobility patterns as recorded by mobile network usage. Experiments conducted over an extensive dataset from the main Italian telecom operator show that the proposed approach is effective and can be applied to a number of different scenarios. These results can have a strong impact on a wide range of pervasive applications ranging from location-based services to urban planning.