Human mobility data in the COVID-19 pandemic: characteristics, applications, and challenges

• DOI: 10.1080/17538947.2021.1952324
• Publication Date: 2021-07-14T08:09:10Z
• Authors: Tao Hu; Siqin Wang; Bing She; Mengxi Zhang; Xiao Huang; Yunhe Cui; Jacob Khuri; Yaxin Hu; Xiaokang Fu; Xiaoyue Wang; Peixiao Wang; Xinyan Zhu; Shuming Bao; Wendy Guan; Zhenlong Li
• Keywords: Pandemic; Mobility model; Mobile phone

The COVID-19 pandemic poses unprecedented challenges around the world. Many studies have applied mobility data to explore spatiotemporal trends over time, investigate associations with other variables, and predict or simulate spread of COVID-19. Our objective was provide a comprehensive overview human open guide researchers policymakers in conducting data-driven evaluations decision-making for infectious disease outbreaks. We summarized usage by reviewing recent publications on from data-oriented perspective. identified three major sources data: public transit systems, mobile operators, phone applications. Four approaches been commonly used estimate mobility: transit-based flow, social activity patterns, index-based data, media-derived data. compared datasets' characteristics assessing privacy, quality, space–time coverage, high-performance storage processing, accessibility. also present future directions using This review makes pivotal contribution understanding use access