Predictability of human mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.

ABSTRACT: Human mobility is fundamental to a range of applications including epidemic control, urban planning, and traffic engineering. While laws governing individual movement trajectories and population flows across locations have been extensively studied, the predictability of population-level mobility during the COVID-19 pandemic driven by specific activities such as work, shopping, and recreation remains elusive. Here we analyze mobility data for six place categories at the US county level from 2020 February 15 to 2021 November 23 and measure how the predictability of these mobility metrics changed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We quantify the time-varying predictability in each place category using an information-theoretic metric, permutation entropy. We find disparate predictability patterns

SUBMITTER: Hajlasz M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11305134 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature