Understanding communities using mobile network big data CPRsouth 2015

Abstract

Understanding the strength and boundaries of human connections can help identify communities amongst a population, and is valuable knowledge for modeling disease spread, information flow, and mobility patterns. Administrative boundaries, formed by history and geography, do not necessarily reflect the actual communities or social interaction patterns within a region. In this study we employ community detection algorithms to a mobile Call Detail Records (CDR) network in Sri Lanka in order to compare natural communities existing in the interaction network against administrative regions of Sri Lanka. Additionally we explore how these communities segment into a further level of sub-communities.