RAPID/Collaborative Research: High-Frequency Data Collection for Human Mobility Prediction during COVID-19

随着全国各地的企业、学校和许多公共场所关闭，COVID-19已经并将继续极大地改变数百万美国人的生活。政府官员的建议和个人的担忧和恐惧，从根本上改变了美国人的日常生活模式，美国人采取了保持社交距离、适当隔离甚至自我隔离的做法。这个快速反应研究（Rapid）项目将提高我们在COVID-19等大规模公共卫生危机造成的突然中断下评估和预测流动模式变化的能力。具体重点将是了解流动模式的变化，以及在与这一重大公共卫生危机相关的事件中形成这些变化的复杂和动态的决策过程。该项目将大大提高公共机构应对COVID-19和未来类似公共卫生危机的准备和反应能力，从而促进国家健康、繁荣和福祉。它还将有助于理解和预测人类流动模式的减少、变化和恢复，促进人类流动和城市弹性科学的进步，与国家科学基金会的使命保持一致。该RAPID项目的目标是：(1)利用社交媒体数据挖掘技术捕捉并最终预测2019冠状病毒病大流行期间人类流动模式的时空变化；(2)通过智能手机应用程序进行高频个人层面的调查，了解影响流动模式变化的动机、决策和情感因素；(3)探索高保真、高精度人类流动性预测的转换和收敛函数。这项研究的智力价值包括：发现了与社会距离、庇护和自我隔离做法有关的公共卫生危机中出现的独特流动模式；前所未有地收集了关于影响流动性决策的动机、决策和情感因素的纵向证据；并开发了利用小代表性样本进行高保真机动性预测的创新算法。从该项目中获得的数据和知识将加强未来对城市交通、出行需求和资源配置建模的研究，并帮助决策者评估面临COVID-19等毁灭性灾害的主要城市大都市区的应对和恢复情况。项目成果将通过波士顿地区研究计划（BARI），东北大学和哈佛大学之间的大学间合作伙伴关系，并通过城市实验室网络传播。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

COVID-19 has and is continuing to dramatically alter the lives of millions of Americans as businesses, schools, and many public places have closed around the country. Recommendations of public officials along with individual concerns and fears have fundamentally changed the pattern of daily routines as Americans have adopted the practices of social distancing, sheltering in place, and even self-quarantine. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project will improve our ability to assess and predict changes in mobility patterns under sudden disruptions caused by large-scale public health crises such as COVID-19. The specific focus will be to understand changes in mobility patterns and the complex and dynamic decision-making process shaping these changes during the unfolding events associated with this major public health crisis. The project will advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare by greatly improving the preparedness and responses of public agencies facing COVID-19 and future similar public health crises. It will also help understand and predict reduction, change, and recovery of human mobility patterns promoting the progress of science in human mobility and urban resilience, in alignment with the mission of NSF.The objectives of this RAPID project are to: (1) capture and ultimately predict spatiotemporal changes in the patterns of human mobility in response to the COVID-19 pandemic using social media data mining techniques; (2) perform high-frequency individual-level surveys via a smartphone app to understand motivational, decisional, and sentimental factors shaping changes in mobility patterns; and (3) explore conversion and convergence functions for high fidelity and high accuracy human mobility prediction. The intellectual merits of this research include: the discovery of unique mobility patterns emerging from this public health crises related to social distancing, sheltering, and self-quarantine practices; the unprecedented gathering of longitudinal evidence about the motivational, decisional and sentimental factors shaping mobility decisions; and the development of innovative algorithms of using a small representative sample for high-fidelity mobility prediction. The data and knowledge gained from the project will enhance future studies on urban mobility, travel demand and resource allocation modeling, and help policymakers assess the response and recovery of major urban metropolitan area facing a devastating disaster such as COVID-19. Project outcomes will be disseminated through the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), an inter-university partnership between Northeastern University and Harvard University, and through the MetroLab Network.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.