Coupling human mobility and social ties.

ABSTRACT: Studies using massive, passively collected data from communication technologies have revealed many ubiquitous aspects of social networks, helping us understand and model social media, information diffusion and organizational dynamics. More recently, these data have come tagged with geographical information, enabling studies of human mobility patterns and the science of cities. We combine these two pursuits and uncover reproducible mobility patterns among social contacts. First, we introduce measures of mobility similarity and predictability and measure them for populations of users in three large urban areas. We find individuals' visitations patterns are far more similar to and predictable by social contacts than strangers and that these measures are positively correlated with tie strength

SUBMITTER: Toole JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4387518 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature