Dr. Satchit Balsari, fellow at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, recently co-authored a letter in Science magazine advocating for the use of aggregated mobility data to measure the effectiveness of COVID-19 response efforts such as social distancing.
In the letter, the authors write: “The research and public health response communities can and should use population mobility data collected by private companies, with appropriate legal, organizational, and computational safeguards in place. When aggregated, these data can help refine interventions by providing near real-time information about changes in patterns of human movement.”