![]() It is well recognized that human movement in the spatial and temporal dimensions has direct influence on disease transmission. Only limited research, however, was reported at the micro scale, such as in the environment exemplified by a relatively closed campus, small community, school, residential, or hospital buildings with a few exceptions. Recent outbreaks of highly communicable diseases have triggered a marked rise in the number of studies on infectious disease transmissions, with equal amount of attention on the mechanisms of global disease spread, and at the regional scale of within countries or cities. Mathematicians and geographers have long studied the spatiotemporal transmission of infectious diseases from different perspectives with numerical models, graph or mapping tools. The diffusion of a contagious disease traverses various scales from the local and regional to the global. The findings revealed micro-scale transmission hotspots on a university campus and provided insights for local control and prevention strategies. This study proved that tracking technology an effective technique for obtaining data for micro-scale influenza transmission research. ![]() A comparison of space-time activity patterns between participants who caught seasonal influenza and those who did not revealed interesting patterns. When compared to diary data, the segmented tracking data demonstrated to be an effective alternative and showed greater accuracies in time as well as the details of routes taken by participants. The A-GPS data set was then used for visual explorations including density surface visualization and connection analysis to examine space-time activity patterns in relation to chances of influenza infection. Processed data was validated with traditional activity diaries. Spatiotemporal processing was conducted for data cleaning and segmentation. Specifically, this study employed A-GPS tracking devices to collect data on a university campus. We also reports preliminary findings on activity patterns related to chances of influenza infection in a pilot study. This study describes the use of tracking devices to collect data of space-time trajectories and the spatiotemporal processing of such data to facilitate micro-scale flu transmission study. The use of low-cost tracking devices in medical research has also been proved effective by more and more studies. The potential for using tracking technologies to capture detailed space-time trajectories and model individual behaviour is increasing rapidly, as technological advances enable the manufacture of small, lightweight, highly sensitive, and affordable receivers and the routine use of location-aware devices has become widespread (e.g., smart cellular phones). While efforts continue in studying the large scale dissemination of contagious diseases, individual-based activity and behaviour study benefits not only disease transmission modelling but also the control, containment, and prevention decision making at the local scale. ![]() Infectious diseases pose increasing threats to public health with increasing population density and more and more sophisticated social networks.
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