The Use of Human Mobility Data in Public Health Emergencies

This white paper summarizes key learnings from a four-part seminar, “Safe, Fair, Equitable and Responsible Use of Human Mobility Data,” which convened in March and April 2021 at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. The seminar was attended by over 40 domain experts representing academia, industry, law, humanitarian relief, and disaster response. The interdisciplinary exchange sought to map areas of convergence between technology companies that produce human mobility data, epidemiologists and public health practitioners that incorporate these novel data streams into their models and research, lawyers, ethicists, and data scientists that are concerned with responsible data management including privacy protection for individuals and groups, and health agencies and disaster responders that use insights from such data for decision making. Seminar deliberations also identified the technical, regulatory, and translational gaps that preclude the effective integration of such data into field response.