Modelling exposure between populations using networks of mobility during Covid-19

TL;DR

This study models human exposure networks during Covid-19 using mobile phone data and evaluates gravity and radiation models to understand changes in mobility and contact patterns across postal code areas in Finland.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of weighted exposure-networks based on mobile data and compares gravity and radiation models for reconstructing these networks during the pandemic.

Findings

Exposure networks decreased during Covid-19 pandemic.

Post-pandemic networks became more proximity weighted.

Gravity and radiation models effectively fit the empirical exposure data.

Abstract

The use of mobile phone call detail records and device location data for the calling patterns, movements, and social contacts of individuals, has proven to be valuable for devising models and understanding of their mobility and behaviour patterns. In this study we investigate weighted exposure-networks of human daily activities in the capital region of Finland as a proxy for contacts between postal code areas during the pre-pandemic year 2019 and pandemic years 2020, 2021 and early 2022. We investigate the suitability of gravity and radiation type models for reconstructing the exposure-networks based on geo-spatial and population mobility information. For this we use a mobile phone dataset of aggregated daily visits from a postal code area to cellphone grid locations, and treat it as a bipartite network to create weighted one mode projections using a weighted co-occurrence function. We fit a gravitation model and a radiation model to the averaged weekly and yearly projection networks with geo-spatial and socioeconomic variables of the postal code areas and their populations. We also consider an extended gravity type model comprising of additional postal area information such as distance via public transportation and population density. The results show that the co-occurrence of human activities, or exposure, between postal code areas follows both the gravity and radiation type interactions, once fitted to the empirical network. The effects of the pandemic beginning in 2020 can be observed as a decrease of the overall activity as well as of the exposure of the projected networks. In general, the results show that the postal code level networks changed to be more proximity weighted after the pandemic began, following the government imposed non-pharmaceutical interventions, with differences based on the geo-spatial and socioeconomic structure of the areas.