Public Mobility Data Enables COVID-19 Forecasting and Management at Local and Global Scales

Cornelia Ilin, Sébastien Annan-Phan (), Xiao Hui Tai, Shikhar Mehra, Solomon M. Hsiang and Joshua Blumenstock

No 28120, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Policymakers everywhere are working to determine the set of restrictions that will effectively contain the spread of COVID-19 without excessively stifling economic activity. We show that publicly available data on human mobility — collected by Google, Facebook, and other providers — can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions and forecast the spread of COVID-19. This approach relies on simple and transparent statistical models, and involves minimal assumptions about disease dynamics. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using local and regional data from China, France, Italy, South Korea, and the United States, as well as national data from 80 countries around the world.

JEL-codes: C1 C8 H12 H70 I18 O2 R40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-for
Note: DEV EEE EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Cornelia Ilin & Sébastien Annan-Phan & Xiao Hui Tai & Shikhar Mehra & Solomon Hsiang & Joshua E. Blumenstock, 2021. "Public mobility data enables COVID-19 forecasting and management at local and global scales," Scientific Reports, vol 11(1).

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28120.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28120

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w28120

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().