Publications

Ethical Challenges Arising from the Mapping of Mobile Phone Location Data

Authors: Louise Sieg, Hamish Gibbs, James Cheshire Published: October, 2024 in [[The Cartographic Journal]] Full text link Abstract Mobile phone location datasets offer opportunities to conduct spatial analysis at very granular levels. In most jurisdictions their collection and use are subject to legal requirements to protect the privacy of the individuals generating the data and to prevent its disclosure. However, it can be the case that geographically referenced datasets, which meet the legal and statistical requirements of non-disclosure, reveal much more when they are plotted on a map....

Harnessing mobility data to capture changing work from home behaviours between censuses

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Patrick Ballantyne, James Cheshire, Alex Singleton, Mark A. Green Published: October, 2023 in the Geographic Journal Full text link Abstract This paper provides an analysis of working from home patterns in England using data from the 2021 Census to understand (1) how patterns of working from home (WFH) in England have shifted since the COVID-19 pandemic and (2) whether human mobility indicators, specifically Google Community Mobility Reports, provide a reliable proxy for WFH patterns recorded by the 2021 Census, providing a formal evaluation of the reliability of such datasets, whose applications have grown exponentially over the COVID-19 pandemic....

Call detail record aggregation methodology impacts infectious disease models informed by human mobility

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Anwar Musah, Omar Seidu, William Ampofo, Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, Jonathan Gray, Wole A. Adewole, James Cheshire, Michael Marks, Rosalind M. Eggo Published: August, 2023 in PLOS Computational Biology Full text link Abstract This paper demonstrates how two different methods used to calculate population-level mobility from Call Detail Records (CDR) produce varying predictions of the spread of epidemics informed by these data. Our findings are based on one CDR dataset describing inter-district movement in Ghana in 2021, produced using two different aggregation methodologies....

Association between household composition and severe COVID-19 outcomes in older people by ethnicity: an observational cohort study using the OpenSAFELY platform

Authors: Kevin Wing, Daniel J Grint, Rohini Mathur, Hamish P Gibbs, George Hickman, Emily Nightingale, Anna Schultze, Harriet Forbes, Vahé Nafilyan, Krishnan Bhaskaran, Elizabeth Williamson, Thomas House, Lorenzo Pellis, Emily Herrett, Nileesa Gautam, Helen J Curtis, Christopher T Rentsch, Angel Y S Wong, Brian MacKenna, Amir Mehrkar, Seb Bacon, Ian J Douglas, Stephen J W Evans, Laurie Tomlinson, Ben Goldacre, Rosalind M Eggo, on behalf of the OpenSAFELY consortium Published: December, 2022 in the International Journal of Epidemiology Full text link...

Population disruption: observational study of changes in the population distribution of the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Naomi R. Waterlow, James Cheshire, Leon Danon, Yang Liu, Chris Grundy, Adam J. Kucharski, LSHTM CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, Rosalind M. Eggo Published: October, 2022 in Wellcome Open Research Full text link Abstract Background: Mobility data have demonstrated major changes in human movement patterns in response to COVID-19 and associated interventions in many countries. This involves sub-national redistribution, short-term relocations, and international migration. Aggregated mobile phone location data combined with small-area census population data allow changes in the population distribution of the UK to be quantified with high spatial and temporal granularity....

Association between mobility, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and COVID-19 transmission in Ghana: A modelling study using mobile phone data

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Yang Liu, Sam Abbott, Isaac Baffoe-Nyarko, Dennis O. Laryea, Ernest Akyereko, Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, Ivy Asantewaa Asante, Oriol Mitjà, LSHTM CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, William Ampofo, Franklin Asiedu-Bekoe, Michael Marks, Rosalind M. Eggo Published: September, 2022 in PLOS Global Public Health Full text link Abstract Governments around the world have implemented non-pharmaceutical interventions to limit the transmission of COVID-19. Here we assess if increasing NPI stringency was associated with a reduction in COVID-19 cases in Ghana....

Severity of Severe Acute Respiratory System Coronavirus 2 Alpha Variant in England

Authors: Daniel J Grint, Kevin Wing, Catherine Houlihan, Hamish P Gibbs, Stephen J W Evans, Elizabeth Williamson, Helen I McDonald, Krishnan Bhaskaran, David Evans, Alex J Walker, George Hickman, Emily Nightingale, Anna Schultze, Christopher T Rentsch, Chris Bates, Jonathan Cockburn, Helen J Curtis, Caroline E Morton, Sebastian Bacon, Simon Davy, Angel Y S Wong, Amir Mehrkar, Laurie Tomlinson, Ian J Douglas, Rohini Mathur, Brian MacKenna, Peter Ingelsby, Richard Croker, John Parry, Frank Hester, Sam Harper, Nicholas J DeVito, Will Hulme, John Tazare, Liam Smeeth, Ben Goldacre, Rosalind M Eggo...

Detecting behavioural changes in human movement to inform the spatial scale of interventions against COVID-19

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Emily Nightingale, Yang Liu, James Cheshire, Leon Danon, Liam Smeeth, Carl A. B. Pearson, Chris Grundy, LSHTM CMMID COVID-19 Working Group, Adam J. Kucharski, Rosalind M. Eggo Published: July, 2021 in PLOS Computational Biology Full text link Abstract On March 23 2020, the UK enacted an intensive, nationwide lockdown to mitigate transmission of COVID-19. As restrictions began to ease, more localized interventions were used to target resurgences in transmission....

Reconstructing the global dynamics of unreported COVID-19 cases and infections

Authors: Timothy W. Russell, Nick Golding, Joel Hellewell, Sam Abbott, Carl A. B. Pearson, Kevin van Zandvoort, Christopher I. Jarvis, Hamish Gibbs, Yang Liu, Rosalind M. Eggo, W. John Edmunds, Adam J. Kucharski, CMMID COVID-19 working group Published: July, 2020 in BMC Medicine Full text link Abstract Asymptomatic or subclinical SARS-CoV-2 infections are often unreported, which means that confirmed case counts may not accurately reflect underlying epidemic dynamics. Understanding the level of ascertainment (the ratio of confirmed symptomatic cases to the true number of symptomatic individuals) and undetected epidemic progression is crucial to informing COVID-19 response planning, including the introduction and relaxation of control measures....

Changing travel patterns in China during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Hamish Gibbs, Yang Liu, Carl AB Pearson, Christopher I Jarvis, Chris Grundy, Billy J Quilty, Charlie Diamond, Rosalind M Eggo Published: May, 2020 in Nature Communications Full text link Abstract Understanding changes in human mobility in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic is crucial for assessing the impacts of travel restrictions designed to reduce disease spread. Here, relying on data from mainland China, we investigated the spatio-temporal characteristics of human mobility between 1st January and 1st March 2020 and discussed their public health implications....