Quantifying travel behavior for infectious disease research: a comparison of data from surveys and mobile phones

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Sci Rep
• Personal Author:
  Wesolowski, Amy ; Stresman, Gillian ; Eagle, Nathan ; Stevenson, Jennifer ; Owaga, Chrispin ; Marube, Elizabeth ; Bousema, Teun ; Drakeley, Christopher ; Cox, Jonathan ; Buckee, Caroline O.
• Description:
  Human travel impacts the spread of infectious diseases across spatial and temporal scales, with broad implications for the biological and social sciences. Individual data on travel patterns have been difficult to obtain, particularly in low-income countries. Travel survey data provide detailed demographic information, but sample sizes are often small and travel histories are hard to validate. Mobile phone records can provide vast quantities of spatio-temporal travel data but vary in spatial resolution and explicitly do not include individual information in order to protect the privacy of subscribers. Here we compare and contrast both sources of data over the same time period in a rural area of Kenya. Although both data sets are able to quantify broad travel patterns and distinguish regional differences in travel, each provides different insights that can be combined to form a more detailed picture of travel in low-income settings to understand the spread of infectious diseases.
• Subjects:
  Adolescent Adult Article Cell Phones Child Child, Preschool Data Collection Female Humans Infant Infant, Newborn Malaria Male Travel

  More +
• Source:
  Sci Rep. 2014; 4.
• Pubmed ID:
  25022440
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC4894426
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  U54 GM088558/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States ; U54GM088558/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/United States
• Place as Subject:
  Kenya
• Volume:
  4
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:fdccb0803cc6843d87ff1dbb1321d93adf27fd11b3c741451f25c2eedc87d7b7
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/40062/cdc_40062_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 610.10 KB ]