Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement

From the perspective of human mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a natural experiment of enormous reach in space and time. Here, we analyse the inherent multiple scales of human mobility using Facebook Movement maps collected before and during the first UK lockdown. Firstly, we obtain the p...

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Main Authors: Juni Schindler, Jonathan Clarke, Mauricio Barahona
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: The Royal Society 2023-10-01
Series:Royal Society Open Science
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Online Access:https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230405
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author Juni Schindler
Jonathan Clarke
Mauricio Barahona
author_facet Juni Schindler
Jonathan Clarke
Mauricio Barahona
author_sort Juni Schindler
collection DOAJ
description From the perspective of human mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a natural experiment of enormous reach in space and time. Here, we analyse the inherent multiple scales of human mobility using Facebook Movement maps collected before and during the first UK lockdown. Firstly, we obtain the pre-lockdown UK mobility graph and employ multiscale community detection to extract, in an unsupervised manner, a set of robust partitions into flow communities at different levels of coarseness. The partitions so obtained capture intrinsic mobility scales with better coverage than nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) regions, which suffer from mismatches between human mobility and administrative divisions. Furthermore, the flow communities in the fine-scale partition not only match well the UK travel to work areas but also capture mobility patterns beyond commuting to work. We also examine the evolution of mobility under lockdown and show that mobility first reverted towards fine-scale flow communities already found in the pre-lockdown data, and then expanded back towards coarser flow communities as restrictions were lifted. The improved coverage induced by lockdown is well captured by a linear decay shock model, which allows us to quantify regional differences in both the strength of the effect and the recovery time from the lockdown shock.
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spelling doaj-art-e76ac865d503461ba0e42a1ea444a44a2025-08-20T02:27:45ZengThe Royal SocietyRoyal Society Open Science2054-57032023-10-01101010.1098/rsos.230405Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movementJuni Schindler0Jonathan Clarke1Mauricio Barahona2Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BX, UKDepartment of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BX, UKDepartment of Mathematics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2BX, UKFrom the perspective of human mobility, the COVID-19 pandemic constituted a natural experiment of enormous reach in space and time. Here, we analyse the inherent multiple scales of human mobility using Facebook Movement maps collected before and during the first UK lockdown. Firstly, we obtain the pre-lockdown UK mobility graph and employ multiscale community detection to extract, in an unsupervised manner, a set of robust partitions into flow communities at different levels of coarseness. The partitions so obtained capture intrinsic mobility scales with better coverage than nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) regions, which suffer from mismatches between human mobility and administrative divisions. Furthermore, the flow communities in the fine-scale partition not only match well the UK travel to work areas but also capture mobility patterns beyond commuting to work. We also examine the evolution of mobility under lockdown and show that mobility first reverted towards fine-scale flow communities already found in the pre-lockdown data, and then expanded back towards coarser flow communities as restrictions were lifted. The improved coverage induced by lockdown is well captured by a linear decay shock model, which allows us to quantify regional differences in both the strength of the effect and the recovery time from the lockdown shock.https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230405network analysiscomputational social sciencescales of human mobilityCOVID-19 lockdownmultiscale community detection
spellingShingle Juni Schindler
Jonathan Clarke
Mauricio Barahona
Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
Royal Society Open Science
network analysis
computational social science
scales of human mobility
COVID-19 lockdown
multiscale community detection
title Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
title_full Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
title_fullStr Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
title_full_unstemmed Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
title_short Multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
title_sort multiscale mobility patterns and the restriction of human movement
topic network analysis
computational social science
scales of human mobility
COVID-19 lockdown
multiscale community detection
url https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.230405
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