Use of MNBD for Dengue

Forecasting

Calculating Human Mobility using CDR data

A CDR record gives us the location of the cell

tower/base transmission station (BTS) for a
given subscriber at a given time
Multiple ways to calculate human mobility

Home/Work location and trips from home (Frequent

A - Average monthly
travel between regions
B - Average monthly
parasite importation by
returnings
C - Average monthly
parasite importation by
visitors

night time location to derive home, frequent day time

location during weekdays for work)

Most frequent BTS on a day as the location of the

subscriber and if different BTS, consider it as a trip

Different techniques used in multiple research studies

(Wesolowski et al. 2012, Wesolowski et al. 2015,
Frias-Martinez, Williamson, and Frias-Martinez 2011)

Fusing Mobility Data with the Disease Model

Calculate disease prevalence for each region using other data (Risk maps,
past cases, Other indices related to the disease)
For example, in the study by Wesolowski et. al in Kenya, the following
equation was used.

Pr - probability of an individual acquiring the disease while visiting a region

- Index to account for heterogeneous biting rate for each individual
dEIR - Mean Entomological Inoculation rate
Tr - number of nights lasted for the journey
b - Probability of infection given an infectious bite
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Quantifying Travel using CDR for Dengue Forecasting

Case study in Pakistan uses travel flux to predict dengue outbreaks

Most frequent BTS for a subscriber for a day is taken as his/her location and
aggregated to an administrative unit (tehsil)
Number of trips by a user
between tehsils is normalized
to derive the travel flux from
one tehsil to the other
Mobility data is used to
estimate the introduction of the
disease to Lahore and then
estimate model parameters

Mobility in Agent based models

Geographical area of study is divided into discrete cells that correspond to

each cell tower using Voronoi tessellation
Probability of a person in a cell is calculated for a given timeslot using CDR
In a study on 2009 H1N1 outbreak in Mexico by Frias-Martinez, Williamson,
and Frias-Martinez 2011, mobility model of agent n is defined as

where
pnwday,i,j - probability that agent n can be found in base station j in timeslot i
Mnwday,i - Mobility of agent n on a weekday for timeslot i
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Dynamic Population Estimation

Population estimation for each MOH area or cell tower area is important in
modeling the epidemiology of a disease like Dengue
Data from census, surveys are old and not up to date (Census in Sri Lanka
happens once every 10 years)
CDR can be used to estimate population characteristics (Deville et al. 2014)
log (pc) = log() + log (c)
- Mobile phone user density for a given time for an administrative unit c
pc - Population density for a given time for an administrative unit c
c

Dynamic Census Calculation

CDR data can be used to

infer demographic
information about the
population dynamically
Combined with remote
sensing data, small scale
surveys, demographic
information can be
derived.
Can be used to infer mobility based on demographics like age, gender,
working/non-working etc. (Arai et al. 2015, Fan et al. 2016)

Fan, Z., Arai, A., Song, X., Witayangkurn, A., Kanasugi, H., & Shibasaki, R. (2016). A Collaborative Filtering Approach to Citywide Human Mobility
Completion from Sparse Call Records. Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-16), 25002506.

Mobility model from CDR data

Call Direction

Calling Party
Number

Called Party
Number

Cell ID

Call Time

Call Duration

A24BC1571X

B321SG141X

3134

13-04-2013
17:42:14

00:03:35

Steps to infer mobility patterns

Determine Home/Work location (Using most frequent locations or locations

dependent on time)
Map the trips from Home to other settlements
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Determining Home/Work location

Most frequent BTS at night taken as

home (Wesolowski et. al 2012)
Alternatively, derive timeslots for when
people are at home and when people are
at work/school
Find the BTS most frequently associated
with a subscriber during night
(9.00pm-5.00 am) and day (10.00am 3.00pm) over a period of time (Consider
only weekdays for finding work location) Lokanathan et. al
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Estimate travel from Home to Other locations

Subscriber travelling from Home to other settlement is considered a trip

Settlements are identified as nodes
Calculate the average monthly trips from one settlement to another

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References

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