Analyzing Large-Scale Human Mobility Data to Address Societal Issues

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3402521

Human mobility stands as an indispensable catalyst shaping the fabric of societies worldwide, serving as a critical component in understanding societal behaviors and influencing the formulation of effective policies. This dissertation explores the intricate interplay between human mobility patterns and the formation of impactful societal policies by employing mobility networks extracted from large-scale human mobility data with varying granularities, offering insights for informed policymaking through two distinct case studies. The first case study centers on advancing local economies, while the other scrutinizes the factors influencing community adaptability during the COVID-19 pandemic. Two primary investigations unfold in this dissertation. The prediction of business financial performance using customer colocation networks derived from credit card transactions, employing network modeling techniques rooted in human mobility data; and the analysis of neighborhood adaptability during the pandemic through smartphone-based mobility data, evaluating interventions’ impacts on diverse sociodemographic groups and changes in mobility networks. It aims to offer innovative contributions by developing a novel framework for predicting business financial well-being utilizing privacy-enhanced network-based features extracted from customer co-location networks and providing insights into neighborhood adaptability during the pandemic, taking into account geographic and sociodemographic factors, in addition to amenity accessibility. Ultimately, this study aspires to equip policymakers with well-informed insights gleaned from human mobility data, fostering the formulation of adaptive, inclusive policies tailored to address the evolving societal landscape. The research presented in this dissertation holds the potential to significantly influence informed policymaking concerning communities’ adaptability in the wake of exogenous shocks and the vitality of local economies.