Social Urban Networks

Authors: Tianyu Su , Maoran Sun, Zhuangyuan Fan, Ariel Noyman, Alex Pentland, and Esteban Moro Publication: EPJ Data Science 11, 43 (2022). Link Abstract: As the living tissue connecting urban places, streets play significant roles in driving city development, providing essential access, and promoting human interactions. Understanding street activities and how these activities vary across different streets is critical for designing both efficient and livable streets. However, current street classification frameworks primarily focus on either streets’ functions in transportation networks or their adjacent land uses rather than actual activity patterns, resulting in coarse classifications. ...

Authors: Alberto Aleta, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A.Bakker, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova , Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran,Ira M. Longini,Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, and Esteban Moro. Publication: PNAS (2022). Link Abstract: Detailed characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission across different settings can help design less disruptive interventions. We used real-time, privacy-enhanced mobility data in the New York City, NY and Seattle, WA metropolitan areas to build a detailed agent-based model of SARS-CoV-2infection to estimate the where, when, and magnitude of transmission events during thepandemic’s first wave. ...

Marty, I’ve been to the future and I have bad news. Wordle is getting harder. Not much, but harder. With millions of people playing the game Wordle online and the recent takeover by the New York times, some speculation about whether the game is getting harder is unavoidable. Since Wordle chooses a different word every day, some players have started to complain recent target words are harder to be guessed: It must be a coincidence, but the NY Times puzzles are hard and suddenly Wordle has questionable words ...

Authors: Alex Berke, Ronan Doorley, Kent Larson, Esteban Moro Publication: arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.01139 (2022). Link Abstract: Location data collected from mobile devices represent mobility behaviors at individual and societal levels. These data have important applications ranging from transportation planning to epidemic modeling. However, issues must be overcome to best serve these use cases: The data often represent a limited sample of the population and use of the data jeopardizes privacy. ...