A network-based approach to understand the risk of mobility-related social exclusion in spatiotemporal activities

This study proposes a novel network-based approach to understand the risk of mobility-related social exclusion (MRSE) in people's daily activities. Compared to existing approaches focusing on physical mobility and individual travel network, this study develops an integrated analysis method that considers both population-level mobility network and spatiotemporal dynamics of individual activity patterns. This method considers strong connections, frequent interactions, and key structural roles within a population-level mobility network to be able to better facilitate spatial and social interactions. Further, individuals who are regularly exposed to these locations during their daily activities are considered to be more likely to engage in various activities, access services, and participate in social interactions. With a 7-day bus travel dataset of older adults in Beijing China, this study investigates the risk of MRSE of older adults as a case study, using both the proposed network-based and traditional activity space-based measures. The results obtained using the proposed network-based approach offers insights into the potential spatiotemporal behavior and dynamics for interactions. This study also highlights the importance of evaluating not only physical mobility but also the connectivity, interactions and between different locations and key structural roles within a travel network when investigating the risk of MRSE during daily activities.