Pattern Identification by Factor Analysis for Regions with Similar Economic Activity Based on Mobile Communication Data

The study analyses the regions’ economic activity in Latvia using Latvia Mobile Telephone (LMT) mobile communication data from July 2015 to January 2017. The call activity and a number of unique phone users by 119 Latvia counties and biggest cities were analysed in two steps: at first method of principal components was used to explain the variance in the data and then exploratory factor analysis was applied. Three factors were identified that describe 87.5% of the total variance of the aggregated daily data. The first factor is related more to the regions with higher economic activity, the second and third factors capture, respectively, lowers call activity during weekdays and are related t…