Laboratory
Migration and Mobility
At a Glance
Projects
Publications
Team
Project
Interrelationships between Human Mobility and Infectious Disease Dynamics
Daniela Perrotta, Jordan Klein, Egor Kotov; in Collaboration with John Palmer (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain), Frederic Bartumeus (Spanish National Research Council, Blanes Centre for Advanced Studies, Spain)
We aim to leverage various sources of human mobility at different scales, including digital traces and mobile phone records, to better understand the impact of mobility on the spatial spread of infectious diseases, as well as the impact of health-related travel restrictions on mobility. Detailed Description
Human mobility and the Zika virus outbreak in Colombia
comparison between ZIKV incidence (per 100,000 population) as reported by official surveillance (black dots) and different networks © Perrotta, D., Frias-Martinez, E., Piontti, A. P. y, Zhang, Q., Luengo-Oroz, M., Paolotti, D., Tizzoni, M., & Vespignani, A. (2022). Comparing sources of mobility for modelling the epidemic spread of Zika virus in Colombia. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 16(7), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0010565
The graph shows the comparison between ZIKV incidence (per 100,000 population) as reported by official surveillance (black dots) and as estimated from the stochastic ensemble output for each mobility network considered, namely the CDR-informed network (blue), the census network (black), the gravity network (orange), the radiation network (purple) and the radiation network calibrated to CDR-informed mobility (green).
The inset graph shows the peak week calculated from the model estimates, compared to the observed peak in the week 2016-05 (green line). While the performance of the different mobility networks is comparatively similar at the national level, the figure shows the good performance of our model, including its epidemiological assumptions, in capturing the outbreak dynamics without any fit to the observed data. More details are available in the paper.
Health Care, Public Health, Medicine, and Epidemiology, Migration
Publications
Klein, J. D.:
SocArXiv papers. unpublished. (2026)
Pardo-Araujo, M.; Kotov, E.; Alonso, D.; Bartumeus, F.:
Ecology Letters 29:2, e70317–e70317. (2026)
Kotov, E.; Lovelace, R.; Vidal-Tortosa, E.:
Software. The Comprehensive R Archive Network: CRAN. (2025)
Klein, J. D.; Weber, I. G.; Zagheni, E.:
Demography 61:2, 493–511. (2024)
Perrotta, D.; Frias-Martinez, E.; Pastore y Piontti, A.; Zhang, Q.; Luengo-Oroz, M.; Paolotti, D.; Tizzoni, M.; Vespignani, A.:
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases 16:7, e0010565–e0010565. (2022)
Perrotta, D.; Frias-Martinez, E.; Pastore y Piontti, A.; Zhang, Q.; Luengo-Oroz, M.; Paolotti, D.; Tizzoni, M.; Vespignani, A.:
medRxiv preprints. unpublished. (2021)