Modeling Malaria Disease Spread Using Location-Specific Internet Data

Malaria importation is one of the hypothetical drivers of malaria transmission dynamics across the globe. Existing studies that focused on malaria importation used mobile phone data to study human mobility trends in relation to malaria incidences but did not capture the mobility patterns of those in the human population who do not use a mobile phone based on institutional restriction policy. Hence, the purpose of this study is to assess the impact of human mobility on malaria transmission dynamics using Covenant University Undergraduate Students in Nigeria who are restricted from mobile phone usage as the pilot population study group. One of the core objectives of this study was to develop a novel location-specific Internet Data Model (IDM) to conceptually express travel rates among the pilot population study group of interest. Furthermore, this work statistically modeled the association between IDM-derived travel and hospital-reported malaria incidences.