Can co-location be used as a proxy for face-to-face contacts?

Technological advances have led to a strong increase in the number of data collection efforts aimed at measuring co-presence of individuals at different spatial resolutions. It is however unclear how much co-presence data can inform us on actual face-to-face contacts, of particular interest to study the structure of a population in social groups or for use in data-driven models of information or epidemic spreading processes. Here, we address this issue by leveraging data sets containing high resolution face-to-face contacts as well as a coarser spatial localisation of individuals, both temporally resolved, in various contexts. The co-presence and the face-to-face contact temporal networks share a number of structural and statistical features, but the former is (by definition) much denser than the latter. We thus consider several down-sampling methods that generate surrogate contact networks from the co-presence signal and compare them with the real face-to-face data. We show that these surrogate networks reproduce some features of the real data but are only partially able to identify the most central nodes of the face-to-face network. We then address the issue of using such down-sampled co-presence data in data-driven simulations of epidemic processes, and in identifying efficient containment strategies. We show that the performance of the various sampling methods strongly varies depending on context. We discuss the consequences of our results with respect to data collection strategies and methodologies

Data on face-to-face contacts in an office building suggests a low-cost vaccination strategy based on community linkers

Empirical data on contacts between individuals in social contexts play an important role in providing information for models describing human behavior and how epidemics spread in populations. Here, we analyze data on face-to-face contacts collected in an office building. The statistical properties of contacts are similar to other social situations, but important differences are observed in the contact network structure. In particular, the contact network is strongly shaped by the organization of the offices in departments, which has consequences in the design of accurate agent-based models of epidemic spread. We consider the contact network as a potential substrate for infectious disease spread and show that its sparsity tends to prevent outbreaks of rapidly spreading epidemics. Moreover, we define three typical behaviors according to the fraction $f$ of links each individual shares outside its own department: residents, wanderers and linkers. Linkers ($f\sim 50\%$) act as bridges in the network and have large betweenness centralities. Thus, a vaccination strategy targeting linkers efficiently prevents large outbreaks. As such a behavior may be spotted a priori in the offices' organization or from surveys, without the full knowledge of the time-resolved contact network, this result may help the design of efficient, low-cost vaccination or social-distancing strategies

Smart campus tools: Een verkenning bij Nederlandse universiteiten en lessen uit andere sectoren

Sinds we onderzoek doen naar het managen van universiteitscampussen is meer grip krijgen op het werkelijk ruimtegebruik – naast de (theoretische) bezetting en benutting die uit de roosters blijkt – een belangrijk thema. De match tussen vraag en aanbod van ruimte en faciliteiten kan nog veel scherper, vinden velen op de campus. Temeer omdat de vraag steeds dynamischer wordt, de gebruiker steeds veeleisender en het aanbod steeds duurzamer en kostenbewuster gemanaged moet worden. Met de technologische vooruitgang is het steeds beter mogelijk om te meten en te weten hoe gebruikers van de campus zich over de campus bewegen. Dit was voor de Nederlandse universiteiten en hun facilitair/vastgoeddirecteuren (verenigd in het DFB netwerk) aanleiding om eind 2015 een onderzoeksopdracht te verstrekken, met als thema “Smart campus tools†voor het meten en verbeteren van ruimtegebruik. Doel van de opdracht was tweeledig: om te onderzoeken of/hoe de Nederlandse universiteiten anno 2016 “smart tools†inzetten en om te verkennen wat de nieuwste (technologische) ontwikkelingen zijn. Dit conceptrapport presenteert de resultaten van dit onderzoek. Via deze weg willen we het DFB en alle personen die via interviews of enquêtes hun medewerking verleenden, bedanken voor hun inspiratie, informatie en tijd. Met dit rapport hopen we de universiteiten verder te helpen bij het (nog) beter managen van hun campus en faciliteiten. &nbsp

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level

Managing the Paradox of Growth in Brand Communities Through Social Media

The commercial benefits of online brand communities are an important focus for marketers seeking deeper engagement with increasingly elusive consumers. Managing participation in these socially bound brand conversations challenges practitioners to balance authenticity towards the community against corporate goals. This is important as social media proliferation affords communities the capacity to reach a scale well beyond their offline equivalents and to operate independently of brands. While research has identified the important elements of engagement in brand communities, less is known about how strategies required to maximise relationships in these circumstances must change with growth. Using a case study approach, we examine how a rapidly growing firm and its community have managed the challenges of a maturing relationship. We find that, in time, the community becomes self-sustaining, and a new set of marketing management strategies is required to move engagement to the next level