List of Publications

I have published 99 articles/preprints 2024 City mobility patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic: analysis of a global natural experiment Ruth F Hunter, Selin Akaraci, Ruoyu Wang, Rodrigo Reis, Pedro C Hallal, Sandy Pentland, Christopher Millett, Leandro Garcia, Jason Thompson, Kerry Nice, Belen Zapata-Diomedi, Esteban Moro The Lancet Public Health 9 e896–e906 (2024) PDF Journal Residential and experienced social segregation: the roles of different transport modes, metro extensions, and longitudinal changes in Hong Kong ...

#2024 #Mobility #Mobile Phone data

Enhancing human mobility research with open and standardized datasets

Authors: Takahiro Yabe, Massimiliano Luca, Kota Tsubouchi, Bruno Lepri, Marta C. Gonzalez & Esteban Moro Publication: Nature Computational Science (2024). doi: 10.1038/s43588-024-00650-3 LINK Abstract: Human mobility research intersects with various disciplines, with profound implications for urban planning, transportation engineering, public health, disaster management, and economic analysis. Here, we discuss the urgent need for open and standardized datasets in the field, including current challenges and lessons from other computational science domains, and propose collaborative efforts to enhance the validity and reproducibility of human mobility research. ...

#2024 #social media #sensors #epidemics

Social media sensors as early signals of influenza outbreaks at scale

Authors: David Martín-Corral, Manuel García-Herranz, Manuel Cebrián & Esteban Moro Publication: EPJ Data Science (2024) 13:43 LINK Abstract: Detecting early signals of an outbreak in a viral process is challenging due to its exponential nature, yet crucial given the benefits to public health it can provide. If available, the network structure where infection happens can provide rich information about the very early stages of viral outbreaks. For example, more central nodes have been used as social network sensors in biological or informational diffusion processes to detect early contagious outbreaks. ...

#Mobile phone data #Mobility #economy #Human behavior

Infrequent activities predict economic outcomes in major American cities

Authors: Shenhao Wang, Yunhan Zheng, Guang Wang, Takahiro Yabe, Esteban Moro & Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland Publication: Nature Cities 10.1038/s44284-024-00051-7. LINK Abstract: Many studies have revealed the predictive power of the most frequent, regular and habitual mobility patterns. However, it remains unclear which components of the mobility patterns contain the most informative signals for predicting disparate economic development across urban areas. Here we use machine learning to predict economic outcomes by analyzing the heterogeneous mobility networks of 687 activities from more than 560,000 anonymized users in Boston, Chicago and Miami. ...

#Mobility #Mobile phone data #Data Science #food #nutrition #accessibility #environments #Human behavior

Effect of mobile food environments on fast food visits

Authors: Bernardo Garcia-Bulle, Abigail L. Horn, Brooke M. Bell, Mohsen Bahrami, Burcin Bozkaya, Alex Pentland, Kayla de la Haye, and Esteban Moro Publication: Nature Communications 15, article number: 2291. LINK Abstract: Poor diets are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Exposure to low-quality food environments saturated with fast food outlets is hypothesized to negatively impact diet. However, food environment research has predominantly focused on static food environments around home neighborhoods and generated mixed findings. ...

#2024 #networks #labour markets #economy

Network constraints on worker mobility

Authors: Morgan R. Frank, Esteban Moro, Tobin South, Alex Rutherford, Alex Pentland, Bledi Taska & Iyad Rahwan Publication: Nature Cities, 1, pages 94–104 (2024) LINK Abstract: How do skills shape career mobility and access to cities’ labor markets? Here we model career pathways as an occupation network constructed from the similarity of occupations’ skill requirements within each US city. Using a nationally representative survey and three resume datasets, skill similarity predicts transition rates between occupations and predictions improve with increasingly granular skill data. ...