Introduction and Purpose
This app is part of a travel behavior research platform developed at the
University of California, Berkeley. The platform development is being led by
K. Shankari under the
supervision of
Prof. David
Culler. Our goal is to collect information from users about travel behavior
across all modes, and use the aggregate information for better transportation
infrastructure planning.
What we collect
We automatically track your location, accelerometer, device-generated activity
recognition, and battery usage. We also allow you to optionally enter your
experiences and feedback during travel through the app. Since our code is
open source, you can inspect the data that we collect in the background at
https://github.com/e-mission/e-mission-data-collection.git,
explore the prompts for optional sentiment reporting at
https://github.com/e-mission/e-mission-phone.git,
and see the analysis that we perform at
https://github.com/e-mission/e-mission-server.git
How we associate it with you
You log in to the app using a valid gmail address. We map the gmail address to
a unique UUID and associate all collected data with the UUID. In general, the
mapping between the email address and the UUID will only be made available to
the lead researcher for the platform (Shankari). If you are not comfortable
sharing your real gmail adress, you can create a fake one to use for this
platform. The only reason we use an email address is so that we can ensure that
your data is only available to somebody logged in as you, and remains available
even if you switch phones.
Who gets to see it
Individually identified, real-time data is only available to the lead
researcher for the study (Shankari). The data may be shared for aggregate
analysis under two scenarios as described below. It will not be used for
marketing or advertising purposes.
- Aggregate views of the collected data (both automatic and optional) that
do not show individual trajectories (e.g. heatmaps) will be made publicly
available through the platform website and on the phone app. You can explore
this data on the "aggregate" tab of this app before consenting to data
collection.
- Time-delayed subsets of individual trajectory data, associated with their
UUIDs but not email addresses, may by shared with collaborators, or released as
research datasets to the community from time to time. If this is done, the time
delay for sharing with collaborators will be at least one month, and the time
delay for releasing to the community will be at least one year. Both
collaborators and researchers will be asked to agree that they will publish
only aggregate, non personally identifiable results, and will not re-share the
data with others.
Benefits and Compensation
You will not be directly compensated for contributing your data to this
platform.
However, we will use this information to provide you with a personalized travel
profile that can be compared with the travel profiles of our other users, and
with state and federal goals for daily exercise and GHG emission reduction. In
addition, we will display aggregate travel patterns and aggregate crowdsourced
safe/unsafe zones that you can use while making travel choices. You will have a
chance to see the aggregate data generated before choosing to provide your own.
Studies lead by other researchers
If this platform is being used to collect data for a study conducted by another
researcher, for example, from a Transportation Engineering Department, then you
will be asked to assent to a separate document outlining the data association,
retention and sharing policies for that study,
in addition to the policies
above. We will make all data, including the mapping between the email
address and the UUID, directly available to the lead researcher for the main
study. This will allow them to associate the automatically gathered information
with demographic data, and any pre and post surveys that they conduct as part
of their study. The other researcher may also choose to compensate you for your
time, as described in the protocol document for that study.
Your rights
Participation in research is completely voluntary. You have the
right to decline to participate or to withdraw at any point in this study
without penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled.
Questions
If you have any questions about this research, please feel free to contact us.
For the quickest response, you can send email to the entire team at
e-mission@lists.eecs.berkeley.edu.
If you want to contact only the lead researcher or the PI, you can use their
profiles above.
If you have any questions about your rights or treatment as a research
participant using this platform, please contact the University of California at
Berkeley's Committee for Protection of Human Subjects at 510-642-7461, or
e-mail
subjects@berkeley.edu.