Abstract

From choosing a restaurant for dinner, to deciding whether to cycle or drive, spatial decisions are ubiquitous in human day-to-day lives. Taken together, these choices underlie critical societal phenomena, including the spread of epidemics, traffic congestion, and the emergence of urban segregation.  In this talk, I will present recent empirical findings on the mechanisms underlying individual mobility behaviour, made possible by the study of comprehensive, high-resolution mobility data. The talk will touch upon key aspects in mobility, such as the interplay between exploration and exploitation, the effect of constraints, the relation between social and spatial behavior, and the effect of spatial scales. I will conclude with a perspective on open questions and future directions.

Biography

Laura is Assistant Professor in the Section for Cognitive Systems at the Technical University of Denmark; and researcher in computational social science.

She focusses on understanding aspects of human online and offline behaviour using large-scale data, and methods from Complex Systems and Computational Social Science. Her research led to discoveries on fundamental aspects of how humans move and interact with space, including the trade-off between exploration and exploitation in visiting patterns, the interplay between social and mobility behaviours, and the effect of spatial scales on travel. She is also interested in topics of societal interest, including gender gaps in mobility, the impact of air quality on mobility and physical activity, navigation in urban multimodal transport systems, and the spread of epidemics.