Collaborative Research: HNDS-I. Mobility Data for Communities (MD4C): Uncovering Segregation, Climate Resilience, and Economic Development from Cell-Phone Records

手机位置记录，称为移动数据（MD），是关于人们去哪里的数据。 这些数据是研究人们如何在社会中移动和互动的重要资源。然而，这些数据也非常复杂，因此很少有科学家拥有使用它们的技术技能。还有一些隐私或数据所有权问题，需要科学家获得访问它们的许可。由于这些原因，决策者、从业者和数据所描述的社区中的人们并不使用它们，尽管它们很重要。该奖项支持创建社区移动数据（MD4C），这是一个基础设施项目，将MD转换为一系列有用的措施，描述跨地区的社区和这些社区内的地方的移动性。所有人，包括研究人员、政策制定者和从业人员都可以使用这些措施。 MD4C的工具旨在解决由于数据集中没有某些人（例如，老年人或不经常使用手机的无家可归者）或有太多其他人（例如，整天使用手机的年轻专业人士）而导致的测量偏差。通过将MD与自愿分享其移动信息的人的调查数据进行比较来测量和校正偏差。一旦得到纠正，深度学习技术就可以提取与社会公平相关的流动模式的测量值：种族和社会经济隔离，经济发展和气候适应能力。MD4C平台使研究人员和其他人可以使用这些偏差调整的移动性测量，并使社会科学领域的新研究成为可能。该奖项反映了NSF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。

Cell phone location records, called mobility data (MD), are data about where people go. These data are an essential resource to study how people move and interact in society. However, these data are also very complex, so very few scientists have the technical skills to work with them. There are also privacy or data ownership issues that require scientists to have permission to access them. For these reasons, policymakers, practitioners, and the people in the communities that the data describe do not use them despite their importance. This award supports the creation of Mobility Data for Communities (MD4C), an infrastructure project that converts MD into a series of useful measures that describe mobility across a region's neighborhoods and places within those neighborhoods. These measures are accessible to everyone, including researchers, policymakers, and practitioners. MD4C’s tools are designed to resolve biases in the measures that result from not having certain people (for example, the elderly or unhoused who use cell phones less frequently) or having too many other people (for example, younger professionals who use cell phones all day) in the datasets. Bias is measured and corrected by comparing MD to data from a survey of people who voluntarily share their mobility information. Once corrected, deep learning techniques can extract measurements of mobility patterns related to social equity: racial and socioeconomic segregation, economic development, and climate resilience. The MD4C platform makes these bias-adjusted mobility measurements accessible for researchers and others and makes new research possible across the social sciences.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.