Data from: Quantifying human mobility perturbation and resilience in Hurricane Sandy

Human mobility is influenced by environmental change and natural
disasters. Researchers have used trip distance distribution, radius of
gyration of movements, and individuals' visited locations to
understand and capture human mobility patterns and trajectories. However,
our knowledge of human movements during natural disasters is limited owing
to both a lack of empirical data and the low precision of available data.
Here, we studied human mobility using high-resolution movement data from
individuals in New York City during and for several days after Hurricane
Sandy in 2012. We found the human movements followed truncated power-law
distributions during and after Hurricane Sandy, although the β value was
noticeably larger during the first 24 hours after the storm struck. Also,
we examined two parameters: the center of mass and the radius of gyration
of each individual's movements. We found that their values during
perturbation states and steady states are highly correlated, suggesting
human mobility data obtained in steady states can possibly predict the
perturbation state. Our results demonstrate that human movement
trajectories experienced significant perturbations during hurricanes, but
also exhibited high resilience. We expect the study will stimulate future
research on the perturbation and inherent resilience of human mobility
under the influence of hurricanes. For example, mobility patterns in
coastal urban areas could be examined as hurricanes approach, gain or
dissipate in strength, and as the path of the storm changes. Understanding
nuances of human mobility under the influence of such disasters will
enable more effective evacuation, emergency response planning and
development of strategies and policies to reduce fatality, injury, and
economic loss.