Research Seminar – Beyond the Census: Understanding Urban Social Resilience Through Behavioral Mobility Data

The Growth Lab’s Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.

Speaker: Esteban Moro, Ph.D., Network Science Institute at Northeastern University

Whether attending in person or virtually, please register in advance.

Abstract: In urban studies, traditional census data provides a static snapshot of cities, often missing the dynamic, real-time interactions that shape urban life and underpin the resilience of our communities. In this talk, I will present our recent research on understanding the dynamics of our cities by analyzing massive behavioral mobility data from mobile phones, credit cards, or social media and its relationship with networked inequalities, such as experienced segregation, access to healthy food, adaptation to the recent pandemic, and public transportation interventions. I will also discuss the methodological challenges and opportunities of using these datasets for population-wide analysis, from managing potential biases to designing better causal analysis. Finally, I will comment on potential data-driven interventions to reinforce the social fabric in cities and mitigate the detrimental impacts of networked inequalities.

Speaker Bio: Esteban Moro is a full professor and director of the Social Urban Networks (SUN) group at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University and affiliated faculty at the MIT Media Lab. He was previously a professor and researcher at the Department of Mathematics at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center at MIT, and the University of Oxford. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics. Esteban’s work lies in the intersection of big data and computational social science, with particular attention to human dynamics, collective intelligence, social networks, and urban mobility in problems like viral marketing, natural disaster management, or economic segregation in cities. He has received numerous awards for his research, and his work has appeared in major journals and is regularly covered by media outlets.