Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies

Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies

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 re...

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Main Authors: Bagrow, James P., Wang, Dashun, Barabási, Albert-László
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2011
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068136/
id pubmed-3068136
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-30681362011-04-08 Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies Bagrow, James P. Wang, Dashun Barabási, Albert-László Research Article 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. Public Library of Science 2011-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3068136/ /pubmed/21479206 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017680 Text en Bagrow et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Bagrow, James P.
Wang, Dashun
Barabási, Albert-László
spellingShingle Bagrow, James P.
Wang, Dashun
Barabási, Albert-László
Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
author_facet Bagrow, James P.
Wang, Dashun
Barabási, Albert-László
author_sort Bagrow, James P.
title Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
title_short Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
title_full Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
title_fullStr Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
title_full_unstemmed Collective Response of Human Populations to Large-Scale Emergencies
title_sort collective response of human populations to large-scale emergencies
description 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.
publisher Public Library of Science
publishDate 2011
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3068136/
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