Using Mobile Phone Data to Estimate the Relationship between Population Flow and Influenza Infection Pathways.

This study aimed to analyze population flow using global positioning system (GPS) location data and evaluate influenza infection pathways by determining the relationship between population flow and the number of drugs sold at pharmacies. Neural collective graphical models (NCGMs; Iwata and Shimizu 2019) were applied for 25 cell areas, each measuring 10 × 10 km, in Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, and Hyogo prefectures to estimate population flow. An NCGM uses a neural network to incorporate the spatiotemporal dependency issue and reduce the estimated parameters.