Predicting the next move: Determining mobile user location using semantic information

The location of a mobile user is used to deliver context sensitive information like advertisements and deals. Predicting the future possible locations of a mobile user can help target specific services. Nokia provided researchers with data collected from around 200 mobile users over a period of about 2 years for the purpose of research. Previous efforts have attempted either to predict the location of the user or the semantics associated with a location. In our work, we demonstrate that using a multi-level approach by predicting the semantics of a location and then the specific location within helps improve the accuracy of the prediction. We have shown that for certain semantic locations, the prediction accuracy can be as high as 90%.