Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2015 Aug 7:3:189.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2015.00189. eCollection 2015.

Mobile Network Data for Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges

Affiliations

Mobile Network Data for Public Health: Opportunities and Challenges

Nuria Oliver et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

The ubiquity of mobile phones worldwide is generating an unprecedented amount of human behavioral data both at an individual and aggregated levels. The study of this data as a rich source of information about human behavior emerged almost a decade ago. Since then, it has grown into a fertile area of research named computational social sciences with a wide variety of applications in different fields such as social networks, urban and transport planning, economic development, emergency relief, and, recently, public health. In this paper, we briefly describe the state of the art on using mobile phone data for public health, and present the opportunities and challenges that this kind of data presents for public health.

Keywords: CDR; cell phone; mobile data; public health.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Original coverage areas of BTS, (B) approximation of coverage areas by Voronoi diagram and (C) geographical representation of LACs.

References

    1. ITU. The World in 2014 – ICT Facts and Figures. International Telecommunication Union. (2014) Available from: http://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Documents/facts/ICTFactsFigures20...
    1. Louail T, Lenormand M, García Cantú G, Ros C, Picornell M, Herranz R, et al. From mobile phone data to the spatial structure of cities. Sci Rep (2014) 4:5276.10.1038/srep05276 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gonzalez MC, Hidalgo CA, Barabasi A-L. Understanding individual human mobility patterns. Nature (2008) 453:779–82.10.1038/nature06958 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Onnela JP, Saramäki J, Hyvönen J, Szabó G, Lazer D, Kaski K, et al. Structure and tie strengths in mobile communication network. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2007) 104(18):7332–6.10.1073/pnas.0610245104 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Soto V, Frias-Martinez V, Virseda J, Frias-Martinez E. Prediction of Socioeconomic Levels Using Cell Phone Records. User Modeling, Adaption and Personalization. Berlin, HD: Springer; (2011). p. 377–88.

LinkOut - more resources