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Event tourism is a rapidly growing phenomenon. Increasing numbers of events are being attended by international travellers. In this paper, we use mobile positioning data (call detail records (CDR)) to focus on visits made to Estonia over the period 2006–2013. The aim is to compare the characteristics of visits to megastar concerts with visits to other events (entertainment events, festivals, and sporting events) and regular visits. The dataset consists of 853,013 visits by 497,038 visitors. The results show a correlation between the distance travelled by an individual and the likelihood of attending a megastar concert. Visitors to megastar concerts are more likely to come from neighbouring countries and to spend less time in a destination than visitors to other events or regular visitors. The geography of visits to megastar concerts differs from that of other types of visits; on average, visitors to megastar concerts travel less within Estonia than other groups of visitors. These results indicate that the hosting of this type of event helps to diversify the supply of tourism in Estonia. It is also clear that mobile positioning data are a valuable source in studies of event tourism.

The extent to which ethnic segregation results from differences in socio-economic factors remains a seminal topic of debate. The growing literature demonstrating the multifaceted phenomenon of segregation urges more focus on individuals' spatial and social interactions. We applied an activity space approach and considered ethnic differences in individuals' activity spaces as an indicator of spatial segregation. We used mobile phone and survey datasets in Estonia. We show that place-based segregation indices derived from both datasets indicate similar levels of ethnic segregation. From an activity space perspective, the results show that the main socio-economic factor affecting the extensity of activity spaces is self-estimated social status rather than education and income. Results show that ethnic inequality in spatial behaviour is not straightforward, but rather that it is linked to how individuals position themselves in society. We argue that socio-economic factors need to be controlled to examine ethnic segregation from activity space perspective.

The concept of accessibility – the potential of opportunities for interaction – binds together the key physical components of urban structure: people, transport and social activity locations. Most often these components are dynamic in nature and hence the accessibility landscape changes in space and time based on people's mobilities and the temporality of the transport network and activity locations (e.g. services). Person-based accessibility approaches have been successful in incorporating time and space in the analyses and models. Still, the more broadly applied location-based accessibility modelling approaches have, on the other hand, often been static/atemporal in their nature. Here, we present a conceptual framework of dynamic location-based accessibility modelling that captures the dynamic temporality of all three accessibility components. Furthermore, we empirically test the proposed framework using novel data sources and tools. We demonstrate the impact of temporal aspects in accessibility modelling with two examples: by investigating food accessibility and its spatial equity. Our case study demonstrates how the conventional static location-based accessibility models tend to overestimate the access of people to potential opportunities. The proposed framework is universally applicable beyond the urban context, from local to global scale and on different temporal scales and multimodal transport systems. It also bridges the gap between location-based accessibility and person-based accessibility research. The concept of accessibility- the potential of opportunities for interaction- binds together the key physical components of urban structure: people, transport and social activity locations. Most often these components are dynamic in nature and hence the accessibility landscape changes in space and time based on people's mobilities and the temporality of the transport network and activity locations (e.g. services). Person-based accessibility approaches have been successful in incorporating time and space in the analyses and models. Still, the more broadly applied location-based accessibility modelling approaches have, on the other hand, often been static/atemporal in their nature. Here, we present a conceptual framework of dynamic location-based accessibility modelling that captures the dynamic temporality of all three accessibility components. Furthermore, we empirically test the proposed framework using novel data sources and tools. We demonstrate the impact of temporal aspects in accessibility modelling with two examples: by investigating food accessibility and its spatial equity. Our case study demonstrates how the conventional static location-based accessibility models tend to overestimate the access of people to potential opportunities. The proposed framework is universally applicable beyond the urban context, from local to global scale and on different temporal scales and multimodal transport systems. It also bridges the gap between location-based accessibility and person-based accessibility research.

As a result of the First World War several new nation-states emerged on the map of Europe. One of them was the Republic of Estonia, emerging from the ruins of the Russian Empire. As Estonians had never had their own state before, the establishment of the parliamentary republic, its institutions and a national identity was a big challenge for its small elite. First and foremost, the ambition was to do things differently from the previous rulers. The Estonian economic geographer Edgar Kant played an important role in the development of his country between 1920 and 1940. His geography was politically motivated, innovative and pragmatic as the rapid development of the state required new theories and methods. The methodological basis for Kant's ‘innovative geography’ became Walter Christaller's central place theory, and he was the first in the world to understand the importance of applying it in empirical research, doing so in the 1930s in the reform of Estonian rural municipalities. In September 1944, Edgar Kant fled from Estonia to Lund and Christaller's theory spread more widely through Kant's interactions with Torsten Hagerstrand in Sweden and later Edward Ullman and Brian Berry in the United States. This paper reviews the relatively unknown geography, and the complicated life, of Edgar Kant, who, it is argued, strongly influenced the trajectory of the triumph of the ‘new geography’ in the 1950s. Through this example it will be shown how peripheral actors and places can play key roles in innovation diffusion and intellectual history.

Relationships between individuals and their social networks have a significant influence on spatial mobility and transportation needs. This article focuses on networks of calling partners using mobile phones and spatial mobility in Estonia. Mobile phone call graphs and call detail record (CDR) data have been used for this study. Our investigation indicates that the larger one’s network of calling partners using mobile phones and the larger the geographic area within which the calling partners live, the more an individual moves around. The connection between the network of mobile calling partners and spatial mobility is most influenced by gender. Used in this way, mobile phone data can be seen to allow studies to be undertaken of the connection between mobile communication networks and spatial mobility.

Both assimilation theory and common sense suggest that the longer the immigrants reside in a host society, the more they become integrated. However, studies conducted in many countries show the opp...

We explore the travel needs and patterns, and the corresponding carbon footprint, of small service organizations during different phases of knowledge-intensive business processes, and compare the results with the priorities given to travel-related goals by staff. We apply a combination of focus group data, mobile positioning, and individual follow-up interviews as study methods. The need for physical travel is determined by a combination of the perceived potential for knowledge creation and transfer offered by each trip, the strength of interpersonal relationships in business networks, and the significance of the travel goal in terms of economic sustainability. The priorities given to travel goals reflect the environmental load of business travel only in domestic contexts, where executing core business processes accounted for the highest carbon footprint. We propose the ways in which the management of business interactions could take into account sociotechnical environment and social recognition of low-carbon communication and travel modes.

We develop a methodology for measuring visitor flows to destinations using space-time tracking data. Based on a review of the literature on this topic we propose that a tourism destination has five dimensions – spatial, temporal, compositional, social and dynamic – that can be measured using space-time tracking data. We analyse three of these dimensions, namely the spatial, temporal and compositional, using the mobile positioning data of foreign visitors in Estonia from 2011 to 2013. Results show that smaller destination areas can be differentiated inside the whole country by the geographical, temporal and compositional parameters of the visits. These findings demonstrate applications of “BIG” data in destination management. A monitoring tool based on this methodology and data is currently being used by the Estonian Tourist Board.

The past decade has witnessed dramatic growth in the implementation of various tracking technologies in tourism studies. A thorough review of literature reveals that 45 papers were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, comprising 40 percent of the papers published in the three leading journals on tourism scholarship. The rate of papers published annually has grown in recent years and it is clear that this novel field is further expanding. The majority of studies analyzed employed GPS, mobile positioning, Bluetooth tracking, geocoded social media, and photo databases. The studies ranged in geographical scope from individual attractions to global capacity. Based on our review, tourism research that uses tracking data can be divided into three categories: the first generation of studies focused on methodological dimensions and the potential of tracking data. The second generation made use of spatially and temporally rich data and uncovered new aspects of tourism. The third generation made u...

This article focuses on generational differences in spatial mobility. Assuming that the ability to cope with the social transformations related to growing mobility varies significantly across generations, we use mobile positioning data collected in Estonia during 2014 providing four main indicators, namely, the number of locations visited and the distances between visited locations, within Estonia and abroad. The results indicate that spatial mobility declines linearly with age; however, a high degree of heterogeneity exists within age groups. Whereas the spatial mobility of the most active members of the younger generation takes place mostly within Estonia, among the most active older generation focus their activity beyond its borders. The study reveals “delayed mobility” patterns among the most active groups of the older generation and a new “immobility culture” among the younger generation in terms of cross‐border activities in a transition society.

The increasing pervasiveness of mobile data – GPS tracking, mobile phones, and locative media worldwide – represents wide-scale changes in how individuals communicate and organize their movement th...

This paper proposes a methodology for using mobile telephone based sensor data for detecting spatial and temporal differences in everyday activities in cities. Mobile telephone based sensor data has great applicability in developing urban monitoring tools and smart city solutions. The paper outlines methods for delineating indicator points of temporal events referenced as ‘midnight’ ‘morning start’ ‘midday’ and ‘duration of day’ which represent the mobile telephone usage of residents (what we call social time) rather than solar or standard time. Density maps by time quartiles were also utilized to test the versatility of this methodology and to analyze the spatial differences in cities. The methodology was tested with data from cities of Harbin (China) Paris (France) and Tallinn (Estonia). Results show that the developed methods have potential for measuring the distribution of temporal activities in cities and monitoring urban changes with georeferenced mobile phone data.

This chapter describes and analyses overlapping planning structures and multi-level planning issues and how they affect current land use and management in the forest landscape. Forest land use in Sweden is based on a large proportion of privately owned forests with the primary purpose of producing timber for the forest industries. Nevertheless, the forests are also characterised by multiple uses and many stakeholders (economic as well as ecological and social) who express themselves and relate to forest management. In this chapter, we present a number of methods, both traditional and more recent, for managing multiple use of the forest landscape. These range from physical planning and the Swedish Right of Public Access to Natura 2000, forest certification, reindeer-husbandry plans, and scenario techniques.

Smartphones or mobile phones are rapidly becoming the primary computer and communication device in everybody's daily lives. This research introduced some indices of dynamic interaction for detecting the wildlife animals. We applied the indices to explore the mankind interaction using smartphone daily GPS data. We program these indices in the statistical software R and got some simulation results. Besides, we put forward some method to solve the GPS data gaps problem and visualized the GPS data on 3D maps.

Knowledge about what transport mode people use is important information of any mobility or travel behaviour research. With ubiquitous presence of smartphones, and its sensing possibilities, new opportunities to infer transport mode from movement data are appearing. In this paper we investigate the role of spatial context of human movements in inferring transport mode from mobile sensed data. For this we use data collected from more than 8000 participants over a period of four months, in combination with freely available geographical information. We develop a support vectors machines-based model to infer five transport modes and achieve success rate of 94%. The developed model is applicable across different mobile sensed data, as it is independent on the integration of additional sensors in the device itself. Furthermore, suggested approach is robust, as it strongly relies on pre-processed data, which makes it applicable for big data implementations in (smart) cities and other data-driven mobility platforms.

Given ongoing developments altering social and spatial cohesion in urban societies, a more comprehensive understanding of segregation is needed. Taking the ‘mobilities turn’ at heart, we move beyond place-based segregation approaches and focus on the practised urban experiences of individuals through a more comprehensive assessment of their activity spaces. This study contributes to people-based segregation research by mapping the activity spaces of individuals on the basis of mobile phone data in Tallinn (Estonia) and relating these activity spaces to (mainly) the users’ ethnic background (i.e. Estonian versus Russian). Significant ethnic differences in terms of (1) the number of activity locations, (2) the geographical distribution of these locations, and (3) the overall spatial extent of activity spaces are found. We also find that these differences tend to deepen as the temporal framework is extended. We discuss the main implications for segregation research and highlight some avenues for further research.

This study explores the long-term effect of events in destination marketing: the ability of events to generate repeat visits to a particular area. From this point of view, events can be treated as the free sampling method in destination marketing. When a person visits an event, they also ‘get a taste’ of the area in which it is taking place. And if this experience is positive, the probability of them returning later specifically to explore the area should rise. The aim of this study is to quantify the long- term effect of events in destination marketing. We analysed the post-event behaviour of more than 56,000 visitors of almost 143 small and medium-sized sports and cultural events that took place in Estonia during the years 2006-2009. We applied passive mobile positioning data in this study:. This is data, which is automatically recorded in the memory files of mobile operators. Mobile positioning enabled us to study visitors’ behaviour in greater detail, both temporally and spatially. The main theoretical contributions of this study are: (1) that events are able to generate repeat visits and therefore have a long-term effect in the context of destination marketing; and (2) that this ability is dependent on the type and regularity of events. For destination managers and governments this study provides a number of suggestions on how to make more effective use of events in destination marketing.

The need to examine the entire scope of everyday activities of individuals in segregation studies has recently been recognized by social scientists and policy makers. To bring forth new insights into ethnic segregation through investigating the activities and movement undertaken by different population groups, we used mobile phone positioning data to compare the activity spaces of out-of-home nonemployment activities over a one-year period in Estonia and abroad. The results show that ethnicity has a significant influence on the activity spaces of individuals. The biggest differences between the two population groups occur in Estonia outside the respondents’ home city of Tallinn, where the Russian-speaking minority was found to visit 45 percent fewer districts than Estonians. Moreover, they exhibit a preference for districts that are more heavily populated by a Russian-speaking population. With respect to international travel, the Russian-speaking minority visits fewer countries and are 3.6 times more like...

Event tourism has become an important economic component of modern tourism, given the growing numbers of visitors and the development of local communities that it entails. This study examines whether the distances traveled by foreign visitors to events differ from those traveled by non-event (i.e., regular) visitors, and which factors influence such distances. We use passive mobile positioning data obtained from visitors to 145 events in Estonia (119,288 visits) and from a comparison group of regular visitors (199,859 visits) between 2006 and 2009. The results show that events visitors come from nearer locations than regular visitors; similarly to regular visitors, the distance decay principle applies in case of events visitors; and that events bring more visitors from more distant countries in the off-season (winter).

This special issue of Journal of Urban Technology aims to provide an overview of how mobile positioning data are used in geographical studies. The issue has been compiled as a conclusion of the Mob...

We designed and applied interactive visualisation to help an urban study group investigate how suburban residents in the Tallinn Metropolitan Area (Estonia) use space in the city. We used mobile phone positioning data collected from suburban residents together with their socio-economic characteristics. Land-use data provided geo-context that helped characterise visited locations by suburban residents. Our interactive visualisation design was informed by a set of research questions framed as identification, localisation and comparison tasks. The resulting prototype offers five linked and coordinated views of spatial, temporal, socio-economic characteristics and land-use aspects of data. Brushing, sorting and filtering provide visual means to identify similarities between individuals and facilitate the identification, localisation and comparison of patterns of use of urban space. The urban study group was able to use the prototype to explore their data and address their research questions in a more flexible way than previously possible. Initial feedback was positive. The prototype was found to support the research and facilitate the discovery of patterns and relations among groups of participants and their movements.

This study addresses the question of how residential location influences the ecological footprint (EF) of households. The type and location of settlements are considered one of the key determinants of the patterns of mobility and consumption, and their associated environmental load. As different settlement types bring different consumption intensities causing adverse environmental effects, the search for the best settlement structure is complicated. We study the environmental load of 16–17-year-old high school students from thirty randomly selected schools located across Estonia by means of a questionnaire survey. The study finds that the EF of high school students is significantly affected by the position of their residence in the settlement hierarchy as a result of different levels of affluence, density, and accessibility to goods and service, all of which vary spatially. Students from the metropolitan area of Tallinn tend to place a larger load on the environment and have higher EF values than students from the rest of Estonia. In addition, higher per capita income and larger living spaces tend to increase the footprint of these students. The results show that the strong sociospatial stratification of Estonian residents, symptomatic of a transitional society, is evident also in their environmental consumption load and mobility habits. Keywords: ecological footprint, residential location, settlement hierarchy, spatial mobility, consumption, Estonia

Human activity-travel behaviour (ATB) is a complex pattern of paths and activities in space and time. Studies indicate that ATB is the construction of daily habitual, weekly, monthly and seasonal routines together with strong variety seeking behaviour. Daily habitual travel patterns are usually taken as a basis, but for transportation planners more knowledge is needed on longitudinal trends in human ATB. Empirical data on prolonged perspective are hard to come by while mobile phone based call detail records could be one means of narrowing this research gap. By implementing this method, the present study attempts to provide new insights on individual monthly spatial travel behaviour. Using call detail records obtained from a set of anonymous mobile phone users, we examined their activity locations and activity spaces for 12 consecutive months. We found modest monthly variation in the number of activity locations, whereas there were great variations in the sizes of individual activity spaces. The monthly variation in individual spatial behaviour is explained up to 17% by seasonality, although the variance is predominantly attributed to individual factors and results indicate significant intrapersonal monthly variability. Findings suggest new avenues for future work on ATB from a longitudinal perspective.

The paper presents initial steps into the research of commuting patterns and functional regions using mobile phone location data. The main aim is to introduce and discuss the potential of mobile phone location data as an alternative data sources to censuses for mapping commuting flows and subsequent functional regionalization. A set of analytical maps covering various aspects of regular daily movements of population and functional regionalization is provided. Estonia is serving as a pilot laboratory for analyses based on commuting flows derived from mobile phone location data. The maps give to reader a synthetic overview of contemporary settlement system in Estonia and introduce the potential of mobile phone location data for research in this field.

The reflection of gender roles in spatial mobility has been in the research focus of geographers as these issues are related to important aspects of the spatial organisation of society and planning such as the location of activities and services, the use of transportation, and housing policy. In this paper we compare gender-driven differences in the activity spaces of a new suburban community in the rapidly transformed former Soviet country Estonia. The authors used a questionnaire survey based on 573 households, and during eight days in 2006 tracked 256 people by mobile positioning. The results show that the space–time behaviour of men and women from the suburbs of Tallinn differs significantly in several aspects: men have larger activity spaces and drive a car more, while women’s workplaces are more concentrated in the city centre, they spend more time in suburban homes, and they use more public transportation. Comparing gender differences in Estonia with differences in other countries on the basis of similar studies conducted in Western countries, it appears that while the distribution of daily activities and the use of transportation are quite similar, there are differences in the location of workplaces. Keywords: gender, space–time mobility, mobile positioning, suburbanisation, postcommunist city, Tallinn

Spatial planning aims to improve the socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of a region, yet, in the spatial planning framework, it is difficult to capture the environmental impacts of the lifestyle of residents as a whole. We use carbon load as an indicator for environmental pressure and explore the spatial variations in carbon load from transport, domestic energy use, and the consumption of goods based on data obtained from the Household Budget Survey in Estonia, in an attempt to understand how residential location is related to the environmental load of household consumption. We use environmentally extended input-output computing for carbon accounting, multiple regression models for statistical analysis, and settlement hierarchy as an analytic tool for characterizing residential location. The results show that the capital region and other higher-level settlements provide favorable conditions for the consumption of leisure-related goods and services even when other socioeconomic variables are taken into account. Industrial cities dominated by apartment block housing are characterized by conservative consumption patterns of residents. For rural residents, a lower carbon load imposed from other consumption categories compensates for their higher dependency on cars. We conclude that there is a need for an integrated and balanced spatial planning policy that considers the entire consumption pattern of populations in different settlement types.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how technological innovation serves as an enabling factor to innovation in tourism management. The motivation of this paper is related to the question of how to innovate destination marketing as a tool to manage long‐term customer relationships.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use mobile positioning‐based research methods to measure visitors' behaviour. This provides new data for the detection and measurement of destination loyalty that could be used as valuable input to improve destination marketing strategy and develop new services.FindingsThe use of mobile positioning helps to improve the quality of data about tourism flows in Estonia. The authors were able to observe and measure the duration, timing, density, seasonality and dynamics of visitations. Further, it allowed also to distinguish repeat visitors. The rich dataset provided by passive mobile positioning (PMP) allowed the implementation of the proposed, more detailed, classification of segments of repeat visitors and the identification of not loyal, somewhat loyal, loyal, very loyal, functionally loyal and forced to be loyal visitors. This analysis made it possible to reveal transit, long‐term, one‐day and other specific visitors among repeat visitors.Originality/valueThe theoretical novelty of the paper consists in the creation of the innovation model of the destination marketing of the country and providing the new approach of segmentation of repeat visitors. Empirical novelty is the use of PMP in studying repeat visitations for destination marketing. The paper offers new ways for governments to shape service policies and allows tourism industry firms to offer new services.

This article focuses on generational differences in spatial mobility. Assuming that the ability to cope with the social transformations related to growing mobility varies significantly across generations, we use mobile positioning data collected in Estonia during 2014 providing four main indicators, namely, the number of locations visited and the distances between visited locations, within Estonia and abroad. The results indicate that spatial mobility declines linearly with age; however, a high degree of heterogeneity exists within age groups. Whereas the spatial mobility of the most active members of the younger generation takes place mostly within Estonia, among the most active older generation focus their activity beyond its borders. The study reveals "delayed mobility" patterns among the most active groups of the older generation and a new "immobility culture" among the younger generation in terms of cross-border activities in a transition society.

Objectives HIV/AIDS risk is embodied within multiple levels including structural and social levels. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of neighbourhood characteristics on HIV prevalence among injection drug users (IDU) residing in the area of Tallinn, Estonia in 2007. Methods A cross-sectional, multilevel design collecting individual-level datada behaviour survey including data on self-reported residency and HIV antibody testing among 350 IDU and neighbourhood-level datadaggregate measures on socio-demo-economic residential characteristics from the 2000 Estonian census. Geocoding and multilevel modelling analysis was employed. Results Among the 350 IDU recruited, earlier age at first injection, fentanyl as the main injection drug, receptive syringe sharing, main income source other than legal employment and ever attended a syringe exchange programme remained significantly associated with increased odds of anti-HIV positivity in the multivariable analysis involving individual effects with no predictors at the neighbourhood level. In the multilevel model, individual (earlier at IDU initiation AOR 1.86, 95% CI 1.01 to 3.44; injecting opioids AOR 4.43, 95% CI 2.74 to 7.18; receptive syringe sharing AOR 2.51, 95% CI 1.86 to 3.37; main income source other than work AOR 2.04, 95% CI 1.32 to 3.14; ever attended a syringe exchange programme AOR 2.58, 95% CI 1.83 to 3.61) and neighbourhood level (higher unemployment rate AOR 5.95, 95% CI 2.47 to 14.31; greater residential change AOR 1.89, 95% CI 1.09 to 3.26) emerged as significant predictors of individual HIV-positive status. Conclusions Our results indicate that both individuallevel and emergent neighbourhood-level factors contribute to HIV risk among IDU and are amenable for preventive interventions.