Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 5: Award Ceremony: Young Scientist Award for Socio- and Econophysics

SOE 5.2: Prize Talk

Monday, March 22, 2010, 17:00–17:45, H44

Unveiling the patterns of human mobility and global disease dynamics — •Dirk Brockmann — Northwestern University, Chicago

We are on the move. Every year, more than 3 billion passengers use the international air transportation network; our world is covered with a dense web of roads and highways, frequently operating at their maximum capacity; millions of commuters travel on an intricate system of railroads and public transportation services. Given the sheer complexity of human mobility patterns and transportation networks it may seem bold if not audacious to ask if basic underlying principles govern the evolution of these networks, whether mobility as a whole may follow fundamental laws, and what types of regularities are hidden within the complex way we travel. Nonetheless, a comprehensive understanding of human mobility is of fundamental importance in the development of models for the global spread of emergent infectious diseases, such as the recent H1N1 pandemic of 2009. I will report on our efforts to understand human mobility networks employing mobility proxies such as the geographic circulation of money, recent results on effective communities encoded in these networks and conclude with a discussion of our recent forecast of the time course of the HN1 pandemic in the United States.