Temporal Networks Based on Human Mobility Models: A Comparative Analysis With Real-World Networks

Mobility is a critical element for understanding human contact networks. In many studies, the researchers use random processes to model human mobility. However, people do not move randomly in their environment. Their interactions do not depend only on spatial constraints but on their temporal, social, economic, and cultural activities. The topological structure of the physical and/or proximity contact networks depends, therefore, entirely on the mobility patterns. This paper performs an extensive comparative analysis of real-world temporal contact networks and synthetic networks based on influential mobility models. Results show that the various topological properties of most of the synthetic datasets depart from those observed in real-world contact networks because the randomness of some mobility parameters tends to move away from human contact properties. However, it appears that data generated using Spatio-Temporal Parametric Stepping (STEPS) mobility model reveals similarities with real temporal contact networks such as heavy-tailed distribution of contact duration, frequency of pairs of contacts, and the bursty phenomenon. These results pave the way for further improvement of mobility models to generate meaningful artificial contact networks.