About the Project
What MobilityPulse is
MobilityPulse is a mobility-research initiative of United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), Al Ain. It is a research instrument, not a commercial product. Its purpose is to build an accurate, evidence-based picture of how people actually travel across the United Arab Emirates — which journeys they make, by which modes, at which times, and why — so that transport infrastructure, public-transport services and sustainability policy can be planned against real behaviour instead of estimates.
Travel surveys have traditionally relied on people remembering and writing down their trips at the end of the day. That method is expensive, hard to repeat, and systematically loses the short walks, the connecting rides and the errands people forget. MobilityPulse replaces the diary with a smartphone that observes journeys as they happen, and asks you only for the details a phone cannot know.
How it works
The app runs quietly in the background. Using your phone's satellite positioning and its motion and activity sensors, it recognises when a journey starts, follows the route while you travel, and closes the trip when you have stopped. It then classifies how you travelled — walking, cycling, scooter, car, bus or metro — from the pattern of movement and speed.
You never press start or stop. What you do contribute is context: confirming or correcting the detected mode, and optionally adding the purpose of the trip, who travelled with you, what it cost, and which of your registered vehicles you used. Those few taps are what turn a GPS trace into research-grade data.
Everything is designed to be light on the device: positioning accuracy adapts to what you are doing, sampling relaxes when you are stationary, and trips are stored on the phone and uploaded when a connection is available — so the app keeps working in a tunnel, in a car park, or with mobile data switched off.
What you get back
Participation is not one-directional. As the data builds up, the app gives you a personal picture of your own travel that is otherwise very hard to obtain:
- Trip history — every journey with its route on a map, distance, duration and mode.
- Carbon impact — the CO₂ produced by each trip, and how much you avoid by choosing active or shared transport instead of driving.
- Analytics — how your distance, time, cost and mode split change week to week and month to month, exportable as a PDF report you can keep.
- Cost and time insight — how much of your week and your budget your travel consumes.
Many participants find the second-order insight the most useful: not a single trip, but the shape of an ordinary month.
What the research produces
Individual records are never the output. Researchers work with pooled, de-identified data to produce transport models and published findings — origin-destination patterns, mode shares, peak profiles, the effect of remote working on travel demand, and the emissions consequences of each. Results are reported in aggregate or de-identified form. Nothing that identifies you is published, and your data is never sold or used for advertising.
Who runs it
MobilityPulse is operated by the research team at United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. The study is conducted under the University's research-governance and ethics framework. Participation is entirely voluntary, and you may withdraw at any time.
Questions about the research, or help with the app: support@mobilitypulse.ae
Project website: mobilitypulse.ae
Thank you
Every trip you record makes the picture sharper. A transport model is only as good as the travel behaviour it is built on, and that behaviour can only come from people willing to share it. Thank you for taking part.
Questions? Email support@mobilitypulse.ae