Privacy policy

Introduction & Purpose
Collecting GPS data via mobile devices is essential to understanding human mobility patterns. This data enables researchers to analyze travel behaviour with exceptional detail and accuracy, supports informed infrastructure planning, provides real-time insights into mobility trends, and facilitates the development of sustainable urban environments. To achieve these objectives, this study requests that participants allow the TRAISI Move application (the “App”) on their smartphones to collect travel history data.
If you do not consent to the terms outlined in this Privacy Policy, please delete the App.

Purpose of Travel Survey Data Collection
The data collected will support research into mobility patterns, route choice modelling, transport mode identification, trip origin-destination purposes, and analyses of urban passenger activity-travel behaviour. Insights gained from this survey will assist researchers, policymakers, and planners make evidence-based policy and infrastructure planning decisions related to transportation.

Information We Collect
The App does not request or store Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as your name or phone number. Instead, it collects mobile device sensor data related to your location (including background location), accelerometer readings, device-generated activity and mode recognition, App usage duration, and battery consumption. The App will generate a “travel diary” based on location data to help determine travel patterns and history.

You may also be asked to annotate these trips periodically with semantic labels, such as trip mode, purpose, and alternative modes. Additionally, the App will request general sociodemographic information such as approximate age, gender, and household type, which helps contextualize travel behaviour and enables the generalization of results to broader populations.

Data Access and Privacy Protections
This survey is conducted anonymously and will not collect any information that could directly identify you or your family, such as names or unique identifiers. The App collects the location of your home and trip destinations; however, this data will be aggregated into larger geographical units (e.g., census tracts) before being made available for analysis to prevent identification of specific locations.

Detailed location data will be securely stored at the University of Toronto (UofT) indefinitely and will only be used for research purposes under the supervision of Professor Khandker Nurul Habib. Any results from analyses will be reported in an aggregated format only. None of the data collected by the App will be sold or used for commercial purposes, including advertising.

Your Rights
Participation in this study is entirely voluntary. You have the right to decline participation or withdraw from the study at any time without notice. To withdraw from the study, you may simply delete the App from your device.

Questions
If you have questions or require further information regarding this research, please contact the research team:
Professor Khandker Nurul Habib
Tel: 416-946-8027
Email: khandker.nurulhabib@utoronto.ca