# Encounter-Driven City-Scale Human Mobility Generation with Large Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17672 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17672/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 16 of its 35 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Oct 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [Self-Refine: Iterative Refinement with Self-Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17651/) (2023)
- [CRITIC: Large Language Models Can Self-Correct with Tool-Interactive Critiquing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11738/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models as Urban Residents: An LLM Agent Framework for Personal Mobility Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14744/) (2024)
- [Where Would I Go Next? Large Language Models as Human Mobility Predictors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.15197/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Deep Learning for Human Mobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02825/) (2020)
- [GETNext: Trajectory Flow Map Enhanced Transformer for Next POI Recommendation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04741/) (2023)
- [TrajGAIL: Generating Urban Vehicle Trajectories using Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14189/) (2020)
- [Mobility-LLM: Learning Visiting Intentions and Travel Preferences from Human Mobility Data with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.00823/) (2024)
- [TrajLLM: A Modular LLM-Enhanced Agent-Based Framework for Realistic Human Trajectory Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18712/) (2025)
- [Context-aware multi-head self-attentional neural network model for next location prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01953/) (2022)
- [Noise Matters: Diffusion Model-based Urban Mobility Generation with Collaborative Noise Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05000/) (2024)
- [Understanding metropolitan patterns of daily encounters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1301.5979/) (2013)
- [Generating synthetic mobility data for a realistic population with RNNs to improve utility and privacy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01139/) (2022)
- [Human Mobility Modeling with Household Coordination Activities under Limited Information via Retrieval-Augmented LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17495/) (2024)
- [WorldMove, a global open data for human mobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10506/) (2025)
- [ELLMob: Event-Driven Human Mobility Generation with Self-Aligned LLM Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07946/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large language models (LLMs) have shown strong potential for human mobility generation by modeling individual routines, activities, and mobility preferences. However, existing approaches remain largely resident-centric: generating realistic individual trajectories does not necessarily recover the encounters that emerge when multiple residents co-occur at the same place and time. To this end, we study encounter-aware human mobility generation, which jointly preserves individual mobility and population-level interaction structure. We propose EncounterMob, an encounter-driven LLM framework consisting of a coarse-to-fine Encounter Generator and an Iterative Coupling Framework. The Encounter Generator first captures city-level encounter rhythms and then instantiates participant-time-venue encounters, while the Iterative Coupling Framework coordinates these encounters with personal mobility behavior through successive refinement. We further introduce an encounter recovery protocol covering encounter marginal and joint distributions over residents, times, and venues. Experiments on the Japan and NYC datasets show that EncounterMob outperforms all external baselines on all seven encounter metrics and all six personal mobility metrics. Compared with ELLMob, it reduces the participant-time-venue joint error by 40.4%/41.7% and the mean personal mobility error by 58.8%/32.7% on Japan/NYC, respectively.