The Importance of Data Collection for Modelling Contact Networks

The recently developed small wireless devices ranging from sensor boards to mobile phones provide a timely opportunity to gather unique data sets on complex human interactions, which in turn will support rich and meaningful modelling of the underlying networks. We are convinced that this approach will be fruitful and effective for tackling various issues such as infectious disease spread and beyond. Human social dynamics are far more complex than the current simplified models in network theory, and the data driven modelling with large-scale experimental results is essential for understanding and building systems that exploit real networks. An important issue to be addressed for taking empirical and heuristic approach is understanding the characteristics of data such as data collection methods, limitations, scale of noise, and so forth. This aspect has been many times neglected during inference of data. We express the importance of data driven approach in this paper.