# Meet Replica

**Published by:** [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/)
**Published on:** 2018-04-07
**Categories:** cycling, data, driving, location-data, mobile-data, replica, sidewalk, sidewalk-labs, sidewalk-toronto, startups, tech, tech-urbanism, toronto, uncategorized, urban, urban-cycling, urbanism, urbanism-tech
**URL:** https://brandondonnelly.com/meet-replica

## Content

Sidewalk Labs is currently building out a platform called Replica that will support them in their development plans here in Toronto. Replica is: “a user-friendly modeling tool that uses anonymized mobile location data to give planning agencies a comprehensive portrait of how, when, and why people travel in urban areas.” Here is a preview of the Replica dashboard showing a section of Main Street in Kansas City. I hope the animated GIF shows up for you.The platform uses a combination of mobile location data (~5% of the population) and on-the-ground checks, typical stuff like manual traffic counts and transit boardings. The goal is to understand in real-time who is using a street, as well as how (driving? cycling?) and why (going to work?). Their introductory blog post obviously stresses the importance of personal privacy, but I am curious how they determine where people are going. I suppose if they pair journeys with destinations (and the durations at those destinations) they can make reasonable assumptions around the why. I think the benefits to all of this are clear. But does any or all of this worry you from a privacy standpoint?

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