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Improving mobility data for infectious disease research

Nature Human Behaviour volume 9, pages 1309–1312 (2025)Cite this article

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Mobility data can help to reconstruct infectious disease dynamics and tailor control and elimination measures. We describe three challenges and opportunities to improve our understanding of human mobility for infectious disease research. We call for simulation and modelling, reporting guidelines and investment in data repositories.

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Fig. 1: Illustration of the effect of incomplete data availability on dynamics of predicted epidemics.

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Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors jointly supervised this work: Derek A. T. Cummings, Amy Wesolowski.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Natalya Kostandova, Ronan Corgel, Sophie Bérubé, Lauren Gardner, Yao Li, Saki Takahashi, Jasmine Wang & Amy Wesolowski

  2. Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA

    Shweta Bansal & Giulia Pullano

  3. WorldPop, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Eimear Cleary & Shengjie Lai

  4. Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Chelsea Hansen, Amanda C. Perofsky & Cécile Viboud

  5. Brotman Baty Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Chelsea Hansen & Amanda C. Perofsky

  6. Department of Biostatistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Matt D. T. Hitchings & Derek A. T. Cummings

  7. Emerging Pathogens Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

    Matt D. T. Hitchings & Derek A. T. Cummings

  8. Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Bernardo García-Carreras

  9. Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Lauren Gardner

  10. Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Moritz U. G. Kraemer

  11. Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Moritz U. G. Kraemer

  12. Centre for Health Information Computation and Statistics, Lancaster Medical School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Jonathan M. Read

  13. Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Gabriel Ribeiro dos Santos & Henrik Salje

Authors
  1. Natalya Kostandova
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  2. Ronan Corgel
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  3. Shweta Bansal
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  4. Sophie Bérubé
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  5. Eimear Cleary
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  6. Chelsea Hansen
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  7. Matt D. T. Hitchings
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  8. Bernardo García-Carreras
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  9. Lauren Gardner
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  10. Moritz U. G. Kraemer
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  11. Shengjie Lai
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  12. Yao Li
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  13. Amanda C. Perofsky
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  14. Giulia Pullano
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  15. Jonathan M. Read
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  16. Gabriel Ribeiro dos Santos
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  17. Henrik Salje
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  18. Saki Takahashi
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  19. Cécile Viboud
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  20. Jasmine Wang
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  21. Derek A. T. Cummings
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  22. Amy Wesolowski
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Natalya Kostandova.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Human Behaviour thanks Ling Yin and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Reporting guidelines for research utilizing human mobility data

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Cite this article

Kostandova, N., Corgel, R., Bansal, S. et al. Improving mobility data for infectious disease research. Nat Hum Behav 9, 1309–1312 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02151-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-025-02151-3

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