Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.

Fundamental laws governing human mobility have many important applications such as forecasting and controlling epidemics or optimizing transportation systems. These mobility patterns, studied in the context of out of home activity during travel or social interactions with observations recorded from...

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Main Authors: Daniel Austin, Robin M Cross, Tamara Hayes, Jeffrey Kaye
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090256&type=printable
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author Daniel Austin
Robin M Cross
Tamara Hayes
Jeffrey Kaye
author_facet Daniel Austin
Robin M Cross
Tamara Hayes
Jeffrey Kaye
author_sort Daniel Austin
collection DOAJ
description Fundamental laws governing human mobility have many important applications such as forecasting and controlling epidemics or optimizing transportation systems. These mobility patterns, studied in the context of out of home activity during travel or social interactions with observations recorded from cell phone use or diffusion of money, suggest that in extra-personal space humans follow a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity - most often in the form of time-independent universal scaling laws. Here we show that mobility patterns of older individuals in their home also show a high degree of predictability and regularity, although in a different way than has been reported for out-of-home mobility. Studying a data set of almost 15 million observations from 19 adults spanning up to 5 years of unobtrusive longitudinal home activity monitoring, we find that in-home mobility is not well represented by a universal scaling law, but that significant structure (predictability and regularity) is uncovered when explicitly accounting for contextual data in a model of in-home mobility. These results suggest that human mobility in personal space is highly stereotyped, and that monitoring discontinuities in routine room-level mobility patterns may provide an opportunity to predict individual human health and functional status or detect adverse events and trends.
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spelling doaj-art-20c2f64d945941a68a97fbd2eb0dcbe02025-08-20T03:01:32ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032014-01-0192e9025610.1371/journal.pone.0090256Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.Daniel AustinRobin M CrossTamara HayesJeffrey KayeFundamental laws governing human mobility have many important applications such as forecasting and controlling epidemics or optimizing transportation systems. These mobility patterns, studied in the context of out of home activity during travel or social interactions with observations recorded from cell phone use or diffusion of money, suggest that in extra-personal space humans follow a high degree of temporal and spatial regularity - most often in the form of time-independent universal scaling laws. Here we show that mobility patterns of older individuals in their home also show a high degree of predictability and regularity, although in a different way than has been reported for out-of-home mobility. Studying a data set of almost 15 million observations from 19 adults spanning up to 5 years of unobtrusive longitudinal home activity monitoring, we find that in-home mobility is not well represented by a universal scaling law, but that significant structure (predictability and regularity) is uncovered when explicitly accounting for contextual data in a model of in-home mobility. These results suggest that human mobility in personal space is highly stereotyped, and that monitoring discontinuities in routine room-level mobility patterns may provide an opportunity to predict individual human health and functional status or detect adverse events and trends.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090256&type=printable
spellingShingle Daniel Austin
Robin M Cross
Tamara Hayes
Jeffrey Kaye
Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
PLoS ONE
title Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
title_full Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
title_fullStr Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
title_full_unstemmed Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
title_short Regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space.
title_sort regularity and predictability of human mobility in personal space
url https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090256&type=printable
work_keys_str_mv AT danielaustin regularityandpredictabilityofhumanmobilityinpersonalspace
AT robinmcross regularityandpredictabilityofhumanmobilityinpersonalspace
AT tamarahayes regularityandpredictabilityofhumanmobilityinpersonalspace
AT jeffreykaye regularityandpredictabilityofhumanmobilityinpersonalspace