Can anyone describe some ways in which scholars of mobility use Big Data to capture and analyze cross-border human mobility in time and space?

I am assuming that you are interested in the methodological aspect of the topic rather than specific tools.

You can use geo-located tweets or cellphone call detail records to capture the mobility at the individual level. The availability of these two data types depends on the geographic area of interest. While you can get a wealth of data in developed/developing countries, chances are low when it comes to countries with civil war (e.g., Syria). You can still estimate cross-border mobility using approaches like the gravity model or the radiation model.

When it comes to the analyses, you can do some time series analysis assuming that you capture the cross-border mobility over time. This is just an example, eventually your analyses depend on your research question. If you provide more specific modeling case, you may get more tailored answers.

Luca Pappalardo

Hi Silvia,

In the analysis of human mobility, there are two choices you have to take. First, the choice of the dataset:

mobile phone data are widely used to study human mobility, and most of the mobility measures used in literature are defined over mobile phone data. Generally mobile phone data aren't usually publicly available, but recently a sample of mobile phone data have been provided by Orange for the D4D challenge (see this link: http://www.d4d.orange.com/en/Accueil). For a discussion on the pros and cons of using mobile phone data for human mobility analysis I suggest you the following papers:

- Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human Mobility, Nature Communications, 2015;

- Understanding individual human mobility patterns, Nature 2008;

- Measures of Human Mobility Using Mobile Phone Records Enhanced with GIS Data, PlosOne, 2015.

GPS data are another widely used proxy to observe human mobility. In particular, several studies analyzed traces produced by GPS devices installed on cars. As mobile phone data, GPS traces from cars are not publicly available. You can find a discussion on the usage of GPS data for the analysis on human mobility in the following papers:

- Understanding the patterns of car travel, EPJ Special Topics 2013

- Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human Mobility, Nature Communications 2015.

Other proxies for human mobility are georeferenced tweets and data from location-based social networks like Foursquare. You can find a free Foursquare dataset at this link: https://archive.org/details/201309_foursquare_dataset_umn

You can produce synthetic data using an individual mobility model or a migration model. Widely used individual mobility models are the EPR model (Modelling the scaling properties of human mobility, Nature Physics, 2010) and the more recent d-EPR model (Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human Mobility, Nature Communications, 2015, and Human Mobility Modelling: exploration and preferential return meet the gravity model, 2016). Widely used migration models are the gravity model and the radiation model (A universal model for mobility and migration patterns, Nature, 2012).

The second choice you have to do is the mobility measure/model to use. You can use Origin-Destination matrices if you want to study the network of movements between two locations (Discovering the Geographical Borders of Human Mobility, 2012), the radius of gyration if you want to estimate the characteristic distance traveled by individuals (Understanding the patters of car travel, 2013 or Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human Mobility, 2015), the mobility entropy if you want to estimate how predictable individuals' movements are (Limits of predictability in human mobility, Science, 2010 or Using mobile phone data to study the link between human mobility and socio-economic development, 2015).

To study cross-border mobility (I suppose you mean mobility between different countries), you need mobility data covering several countries. Generally, mobile phone data and GPS data are provided for a single country, so they do not fit completely your purpose. You can use georeferenced tweets or Foursquare data: they are less detailed than mobile phone of GPS data but they are available for every country.

If you want to study migration patterns between countries, you can use the International Migration database (https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MIG) and refer to the following website and the related Science paper: http://www.global-migration.info/

Article Modelling the scaling properties of human mobility

Article A Universal Model for Mobility and Migration Patterns

Article Understanding the patterns of car travel

Article Measures of Human Mobility Using Mobile Phone Records Enhanc...

Article Returners and explorers dichotomy in human mobility

Data Returners and explorers dichotomy in human mobility: supplem...

Article Understanding individual human mobility patterns (Nature (20...

Conference Paper Human Mobility Modelling: Exploration and Preferential Retur...

Athiq Ahamed

Hi,

It totally depends on the data set and tools that is used. I would mostly prefer a hadoop framework for map-reduce (java/python) and a live connection to Tableau visualization for temporal and spatial analysis. I am currently working on a similar topic and this works.

Silvia Marcu

Thank you. I think Tableau visualization offers the ability to create different views of our data and change them, as our needs evolve. Tableau also allows us to filter or create another views of our data.

Thank you very much. You are right, I am interested in the methodological aspect of the topic. Your answer is very useful for me!

Thank you very much for your complete answer. I will read the articles and then I will utilise the information!You are an expert in the field! Many thanks for your help!

I've just came across this linked article while searching the literature for my project. It seems to be useful for addressing your question.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0129202

Thank you a lot, Hamdi!!!

Aref Wazwaz

Hi. See the following report that might help you:

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/external_publications/EP60000/EP68037/RAND_EP68038.pdf

How can I measure MMP-1 protein activity or protein level from liver tissue?

Binary Logistic Generalized Linear Mixed model in SPSS. Is it doable?

Looking for Materials with high thermal expansion coefficient and high temperature resistance?

Guidelines for survey (question type) analysis?

What are the values needed for gabor filter's parameter for cifar10 data?

Can we block unwanted images during the x-ray prediction?

No title

What techniques can I use to determine the miscibility of polymer blends?

Sample dilution for quantitative analysis using ELISA?

The procedure compute?

How to compare two groups with only two measurements?

What's the best way to measure growth rates in House sparrow chicks from day 2 to day 10?

How to increase a model accuracy ?

1. What is the impact of having different scales in a survey? and how can we solve this problem before and after data collection (Literature)?

What degree of missing data in a particular case/participant results in Expectation-Maximisation no longer working?

New Journal, "Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science" -- do you not know, and have you not seen, this done before?

Can NFL theorem be valid in infinite search space in ML?

How does one access the Cranet survey data on HRM practices?

Is there any research regarding how training and development is going to change in the era of Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Does anyone know how to plot my station to a section plot on Ocean Data View (ODV)?