Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: Despite recent advances in uncovering the quantitative features of stationary human activity patterns, many applications, from pandemic prediction to emergency response, require an understanding of how these patterns change when the population encounters unfamiliar conditions. To explore societal response to external perturbations we identified real-time changes in communication and mobility patterns in the vicinity of eight emergencies, such as bomb attacks and earthquakes, comparing these with eight non-emergencies, like concerts and sporting events. We find that communication spikes accompanying emergencies are both spatially and temporally localized, but information about emergencies spreads globally, resulting in communication avalanches that engage in a significant manner the social network of eyewitnesses. These results offer a quantitative view of behavioral changes in human activity under extreme conditions, with potential long-term impact on emergency detection and response.
Source: PLoS ONE
Language: English
Subfield: Transportation
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,382
Awards: G459367103, G4630394403, ITR - (ASE+NHS) - (SIM+SOC): Characterizing the Dynamics of Complex Networks, G5259331294, G5664279711, G6541015203, G7561134949, NetWorkBench: A Large-Scale Network Analysis, Modeling, and Visualization Toolkit for Biomedical, Social Science, and Physics Research, G948678646
OpenAlex ID: W2142074516