RT Journal Article
T1 Advance Monitoring of COVID-19 Incidence Based on Taxi Mobility: The Infection Ratio Measure
A1 Aguilar-Ruiz, Jesús Salvador
A1 Ruiz, Roberto
A1 Giráldez, Raúl
K1 COVID-19
K1 Virus spread
K1 Virus incidence monitoring
K1 Mobility
K1 Decision making
AB The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on various aspects of our lives, affecting personal, occupational, economic, and social spheres. Much has been learned since the early 2020s, which will be very useful when the next pandemic emerges. In general, mobility and virus spread are strongly related. However, most studies analyze the impact of COVID-19 on mobility, but not much research has focused on analyzing the impact of mobility on virus transmission, especially from the point of view of monitoring virus incidence, which is extremely important for making sound decisions to control any epidemiological threat to public health. As a result of a thorough analysis of COVID-19 and mobility data, this work introduces a novel measure, the Infection Ratio (IR), which is not sensitive to underestimation of positive cases and is very effective in monitoring the pandemic’s upward or downward evolution when it appears to be more stable, thus anticipating possible risk situations. For a bounded spatial context, we can infer that there is a significant threshold in the restriction of mobility that determines a change of trend in the number of infections that, if maintained for a minimum period, would notably increase the chances of keeping the spread of disease under control. Results show that IR is a reliable indicator of the intensity of infection, and an effective measure for early monitoring and decision making in smart cities.
PB Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI)
SN 2227-9032
YR 2024
FD 2024-02-21
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10433/20520
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10433/20520
LA en
NO Healthcare, vol 12, nº 5, 517
NO Departamento de Deporte e Informática
DS RIO
RD May 24, 2026