Mobile phone data highlights the role of mass gatherings in the spreading of cholera outbreaks.

ABSTRACT: The spatiotemporal evolution of human mobility and the related fluctuations of population density are known to be key drivers of the dynamics of infectious disease outbreaks. These factors are particularly relevant in the case of mass gatherings, which may act as hotspots of disease transmission and spread. Understanding these dynamics, however, is usually limited by the lack of accurate data, especially in developing countries. Mobile phone call data provide a new, first-order source of information that allows the tracking of the evolution of mobility fluxes with high resolution in space and time. Here, we analyze a dataset of mobile phone records of ∼150,000 users in Senegal to extract human mobility fluxes and directly incorporate them into a spatially explicit, dynamic epidemiological

SUBMITTER: Finger F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4988598 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature