Mining networks of human contact with wearable sensors

The availability of new data sources on human mobility is opening
novel avenues for investigating the interplay of social networks,
human mobility and dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading. We
report on the design and deployment of a wireless sensor network for
measuring human proximity in large-scale, real-world settings. We
analyze networks of human contact measured in a variety of
environments that include conferences, exhibitions, schools and
hospitals. We characterize the empirical networks from both a static
and a dynamic point of view, exposing important differences as well as
striking similarities across the investigated environments, and we
show the impact of network dynamics on spreading processes occurring
over the contact network.