Cell Phone Location Data for Pandemic Research

Before the pandemic Yale SOM’s Professor Kevin Williams used cell phone location data to track retail foot traffic. During the pandemic he and his co-authors repurposed their approach to track movement during the pandemic, which is publicly available for researchers investigating the spread of the virus.

After the pandemic put a lockdown on all commerce, Williams and his co-authors repurposed their approach to aid in pandemic relief and research. They started in November 2019, and by June 2020, the data set contained 53 million devices, each of which had reported cell phone location data at least 11 of every 14 days. With this they are able to detect the movement of the virus through populations.