Interview Questions for Olivier Telle, Research Scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Regarding Facebook's Data for Good Initiative
Olivier Telle, an urban health geographer at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, is making strides in understanding the intricate relationship between mobility and disease diffusion, particularly for diseases like dengue and COVID-19.
Telle's research is focused on uncovering the impact of mobility on disease diffusion and the socio-spatial dynamics of cities on epidemic diffusion. His work is instrumental in helping policymakers coordinate disease management at a higher level, ensuring interventions are efficiently deployed.
Telle emphasizes the importance of maintaining spatial and social equity in territories to increase resilience against infectious diseases. He believes that by making mobility data freely available, more companies can contribute to reducing bias and providing a broader range of data sources for cross-checking.
Facebook's Data for Good program is one such platform Telle is utilizing to study commuting patterns and disease diffusion. He uses the anonymized origin-destination matrices provided by Facebook, which offer collective mobility data on trips longer than 6.2 km. To mitigate potential data gaps, Telle validates the data against traditional sources like the census or surveys.
One of Telle's significant findings is the inverse relationship between the number of women and the number of Facebook users, as well as in areas with large tribal populations, indicating the impact of the digital divide on his study.
In regions where dengue is prevalent, people often lack access to clean water, leading to in-house water storage and a higher mosquito population, even in unfavorable climatic conditions. Increasing urbanization and human mobility play a significant role in the growth of dengue cases.
Interestingly, Telle's research on dengue in India showed that the disease is sometimes more prevalent in richer regions, contradicting the assumption that socio-economic factors alone can predict disease risk. This finding underscores the disproportionate impact of diseases like dengue or COVID-19 on the poor, a factor that Telle's geographical models consider.
Currently, Telle is working on a project to define if the lockdown has impacted the pandemic curve and the spatial diffusion of COVID-19. His research could provide valuable insights for policymakers in deciding how best to allocate resources, taking into account the disproportionate impact of diseases on the poor.
Over the past 20 years, reported cases of dengue have increased more than eight-fold. Dengue systematically emerges from the poorest and most deprived areas, creating parallels with the 1832 cholera outbreak in Paris. Telle's work aims to make these diseases more visible by better integrating collective mobility data into virus distribution models, thereby aiding policymakers in containing the spread of infectious diseases.
