Mobility data to aid assessment of human responses to extreme environmental conditions

摘要

Mobile phone-derived human mobility data are now publicly available in support of tracking the effect of interventions to control community spread of SARS-CoV-2. 1–3 Previous work leveraged mobility data that used to be proprietary to examine responses to extreme events including wildfires and hurricanes. 4 With increased availability of mobility data, re-highlighting the added value it provides to informing policy aimed at minimising negative health outcomes is worthwhile. For example, mobility data are particularly well suited to assess the effectiveness of heat or smoke early-warning systems promoting collective or individual behavioural actions captured by population-level stay-at-home data. As opposed to hospitalisation or mortality data 5 that becomes available years later, mobility data are generally immediately available 6 and readily useable for real-time evaluation studies.