Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human Mobility

L. Pappalardo, F. Simini, S. Rinzivillo

D. Pedreschi, F. Giannotti, A.-L. Barabasi

Luca Pappalardo, PhD

postDoc at Unipi @siffolonelucapappalardo.com

Big Data Tales @bigdatatales

bigdatatales.com

Epidemics

“Europeans spreaded at the expense of other peoples was by infecting them with infectious diseases […], to which non-European peoples had no resistance”.

Jared Diamond

Who are today’s explorers?

Human Mobility and Big Data

Two Big Data sources

• GSM data60,000 individuals in Spain

• GPS data40,000 vehicles in Tuscany

GSM vs GPS: different resolutionsGPS GSM

recurrent vs total mobility

total radius

all the locations of an individual

recurrent vs total mobility

total radius recurrent radius

all the locations of an individual

k frequent locations of an individual

recurrent vs total mobility

total radius recurrent radius

The characteristic distance traveled by an individual

What’s the shape of returners and

explorers?

2-returners

2-explorers

rg ≈ 10 km rg ≈ 50 km rg ≈ 250 km

Like Columbus…

Different roles in the spreading of epidemics

Marriages are made in heavenre

turn

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retu

rner

expl

orer

expl

orer

Marriages are made in heaven

• We are returners or

explorers…no middle ground!

• Explorers have a star-like

pattern• d-EPR model captures the

dichotomy

• Explorers are spreaders

• Dichotomic Social Homophily

lpappalardo@di.unipi.itwww.bigdatatales.com

@siffolone @bigdatatales

L. Pappalardo et al.Returners and Explorers dichotomy in Human MobilityNature Communications 6:8166, 2015

Thank you!