A Mobility-based Recommendation System for Mitigating the Risk of Infection during Epidemics

The relationship between human mobility and the spread of an infectious disease has been well documented. At the same time, availability of mobility data is growing due to advancements in digital contact tracing mobile applications and GPS-enabled devices. Motivated by these observations, we have designed and developed STRIPE (Safe Trips during Epidemics), a mobility-based recommendation system that can provide safer trip recommendations to individuals. The recommendation model considers the risk of infection of alternative trips between an origin and destination. It also considers the risk of infection of specific points of interests (POIs) that occur at the microscale. In this paper, we present a high-level architecture of the system, its main features and system use cases. The broader impact of our research is that by helping individuals making informed decisions, we promote more responsible behaviors in the community as a whole that could effectively alleviate the impact of the epidemic.