Moving and Calling: Mobile Phone Data Quality Measurements and Spatiotemporal Uncertainty in Human Mobility Studies

Author(s):  
Corina Iovan ◽  
Ana-Maria Olteanu-Raimond ◽  
Thomas Couronné ◽  
Zbigniew Smoreda
2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shan Jiang ◽  
Joseph Ferreira ◽  
Marta C. Gonzalez

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (35) ◽  
pp. 11114-11119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Wesolowski ◽  
C. J. E. Metcalf ◽  
Nathan Eagle ◽  
Janeth Kombich ◽  
Bryan T. Grenfell ◽  
...  

Changing patterns of human aggregation are thought to drive annual and multiannual outbreaks of infectious diseases, but the paucity of data about travel behavior and population flux over time has made this idea difficult to test quantitatively. Current measures of human mobility, especially in low-income settings, are often static, relying on approximate travel times, road networks, or cross-sectional surveys. Mobile phone data provide a unique source of information about human travel, but the power of these data to describe epidemiologically relevant changes in population density remains unclear. Here we quantify seasonal travel patterns using mobile phone data from nearly 15 million anonymous subscribers in Kenya. Using a rich data source of rubella incidence, we show that patterns of population travel (fluxes) inferred from mobile phone data are predictive of disease transmission and improve significantly on standard school term time and weather covariates. Further, combining seasonal and spatial data on travel from mobile phone data allows us to characterize seasonal fluctuations in risk across Kenya and produce dynamic importation risk maps for rubella. Mobile phone data therefore offer a valuable previously unidentified source of data for measuring key drivers of seasonal epidemics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (5) ◽  
pp. 160950 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Panigutti ◽  
Michele Tizzoni ◽  
Paolo Bajardi ◽  
Zbigniew Smoreda ◽  
Vittoria Colizza

The recent availability of large-scale call detail record data has substantially improved our ability of quantifying human travel patterns with broad applications in epidemiology. Notwithstanding a number of successful case studies, previous works have shown that using different mobility data sources, such as mobile phone data or census surveys, to parametrize infectious disease models can generate divergent outcomes. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent epidemic modelling results may vary when using different proxies for human movements. Here, we systematically compare 658 000 simulated outbreaks generated with a spatially structured epidemic model based on two different human mobility networks: a commuting network of France extracted from mobile phone data and another extracted from a census survey. We compare epidemic patterns originating from all the 329 possible outbreak seed locations and identify the structural network properties of the seeding nodes that best predict spatial and temporal epidemic patterns to be alike. We find that similarity of simulated epidemics is significantly correlated to connectivity, traffic and population size of the seeding nodes, suggesting that the adequacy of mobile phone data for infectious disease models becomes higher when epidemics spread between highly connected and heavily populated locations, such as large urban areas.


Author(s):  
Hao Wu ◽  
Lingbo Liu ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Zhenghong Peng ◽  
Hongzan Jiao ◽  
...  

Abstract:Commuting of residents in big city often brings tidal traffic pressure or congestions. Understanding the causes behind this phenomenon is of great significance for urban space optimization. Various spatial big data make possible the fine description of urban residents travel behaviors, and bring new approaches to related studies. The present study focuses on two aspects: one is to obtain relatively accurate features of commuting behaviors by using mobile phone data, and the other is to simulate commuting behaviors of residents through the agent-based model and inducing backward the causes of congestion. Taking the Baishazhou area of Wuhan, a local area of a mega city in China, as a case study, travel behaviors of commuters are simulated: the spatial context of the model is set up using the existing urban road network and by dividing the area into travel units; then using the mobile phone call detail records (CDR) of a month, statistics of residents' travel during the four time slots in working day mornings are acquired and then used to generated the OD matrix of travels at different time slots; and then the data are imported into the model for simulation. By the preset rules of congestion, the agent-based model can effectively simulate the traffic conditions of each traffic intersection, and can also induce backward the causes of traffic congestion using the simulation results and the OD matrix. Finally, the model is used for the evaluation of road network optimization, which shows evident effects of the optimizing measures adopted in relieving congestion, and thus also proves the value of this method in urban studies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 817-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne Thuillier ◽  
Laurent Moalic ◽  
Sid Lamrous ◽  
Alexandre Caminada

eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sofonias Tessema ◽  
Amy Wesolowski ◽  
Anna Chen ◽  
Maxwell Murphy ◽  
Jordan Wilheim ◽  
...  

Local and cross-border importation remain major challenges to malaria elimination and are difficult to measure using traditional surveillance data. To address this challenge, we systematically collected parasite genetic data and travel history from thousands of malaria cases across northeastern Namibia and estimated human mobility from mobile phone data. We observed strong fine-scale spatial structure in local parasite populations, providing positive evidence that the majority of cases were due to local transmission. This result was largely consistent with estimates from mobile phone and travel history data. However, genetic data identified more detailed and extensive evidence of parasite connectivity over hundreds of kilometers than the other data, within Namibia and across the Angolan and Zambian borders. Our results provide a framework for incorporating genetic data into malaria surveillance and provide evidence that both strengthening of local interventions and regional coordination are likely necessary to eliminate malaria in this region of Southern Africa.


eLife ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsiao-Han Chang ◽  
Amy Wesolowski ◽  
Ipsita Sinha ◽  
Christopher G Jacob ◽  
Ayesha Mahmud ◽  
...  

For countries aiming for malaria elimination, travel of infected individuals between endemic areas undermines local interventions. Quantifying parasite importation has therefore become a priority for national control programs. We analyzed epidemiological surveillance data, travel surveys, parasite genetic data, and anonymized mobile phone data to measure the spatial spread of malaria parasites in southeast Bangladesh. We developed a genetic mixing index to estimate the likelihood of samples being local or imported from parasite genetic data and inferred the direction and intensity of parasite flow between locations using an epidemiological model integrating the travel survey and mobile phone calling data. Our approach indicates that, contrary to dogma, frequent mixing occurs in low transmission regions in the southwest, and elimination will require interventions in addition to reducing imported infections from forested regions. Unlike risk maps generated from clinical case counts alone, therefore, our approach distinguishes areas of frequent importation as well as high transmission.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Perrotta ◽  
Enrique Frias-Martinez ◽  
Ana Pastore y Piontti ◽  
Qian Zhang ◽  
Miguel Luengo-Oroz ◽  
...  

Timely, accurate, and comparative data on human mobility is of paramount importance for epidemic preparedness and response, but generally not available or easily accessible. Mobile phone metadata, typically in the form of Call Detail Records (CDRs), represents a powerful source of information on human movements at an unprecedented scale. In this work, we investigate the potential benefits of harnessing aggregated CDR-derived mobility to predict the 2015-2016 Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak in Colombia, when compared to other traditional data sources. To simulate the spread of ZIKV at sub-national level in Colombia, we employ a stochastic metapopulation epidemic model for vector-borne disease. Our model integrates detailed data on the key drivers of ZIKV spread, including the spatial heterogeneity of the mosquito abundance, and the exposure of the population to the virus due to environmental and socio-economic factors. Given the same modelling settings (i.e. initial conditions and epidemiological parameters), we perform in-silico simulations for each mobility network and assess their ability in reproducing the local outbreak as reported by the official surveillance data. We assess the performance of our epidemic modelling approach in capturing the ZIKV outbreak both nationally and sub-nationally. Our model estimates are strongly correlated with the surveillance data at the country level (Pearson's r=0.92 for the CDR-informed network). Moreover, we found strong performance of the model estimates generated by the CDR-informed mobility network in reproducing the local outbreak observed at the sub-national level. Compared to the CDR-informed network, the performance of the other mobility networks is either comparatively similar or substantially lower, with no added value in predicting the local epidemic. This suggests that mobile phone data capture a better picture of human mobility patterns. This work contributes to the ongoing discussion on the value of aggregated mobility estimates from CDRs data that, with appropriate data protection and privacy safeguards, can be used for social impact applications and humanitarian action.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Wu ◽  
Lingbo Liu ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Zhenghong Peng ◽  
Hongzan Jiao ◽  
...  

The commute of residents in a big city often brings tidal traffic pressure or congestions. Understanding the causes behind this phenomenon is of great significance for urban space optimization. Various spatial big data make the fine description of urban residents’ travel behaviors possible, and bring new approaches to related studies. The present study focuses on two aspects: one is to obtain relatively accurate features of commuting behaviors by using mobile phone data, and the other is to simulate commuting behaviors of residents through the agent-based model and inducing backward the causes of congestion. Taking the Baishazhou area of Wuhan, a local area of a mega city in China, as a case study, we simulated the travel behaviors of commuters: the spatial context of the model is set up using the existing urban road network and by dividing the area into space units. Then, using the mobile phone call detail records of a month, statistics of residents’ travel during the four time slots in working day mornings are acquired and then used to generate the Origin-Destination matrix of travels at different time slots, and the data are imported into the model for simulation. Under the preset rules of congestion, the agent-based model can effectively simulate the traffic conditions of each traffic intersection, and can induce backward the causes of traffic congestion using the simulation results and the Origin-Destination matrix. Finally, the model is used for the evaluation of road network optimization, which shows evident effects of the optimizing measures adopted in relieving congestion, and thus also proves the value of this method in urban studies.


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