Mobile Phone GPS Mobility Data for COVID-19 Research in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, 2020

Overview

This dataset contains mobile phone GPS mobility records for Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The records were used in mathematical, epidemiological, and urban mobility studies focused on residence-occupation patterns, human mobility restrictions, and multi-patch epidemic modeling.

The dataset includes the original daily CSV files and a consolidated table with traceability fields. Each mobility record corresponds to a device-level GPS ping generated when a mobile application with location permissions was used. The dataset is released for academic research, mathematical modeling, epidemiological analysis, urban mobility studies, reproducibility, and open scientific experimentation.

Data coverage

Temporal coverage of daily source files: 2020-09-18 to 2020-12-13.

Timestamp reference: UTC.

Local time conversion: Hermosillo, Sonora used UTC−07:00 throughout the study period; Sonora did not observe daylight saving time during this period.

Spatial coverage: Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

Coordinate reference system for latitude and longitude: WGS84 / EPSG:4326.

Number of daily source files: 87.

Number of consolidated records: 80,582,452.

Main variables: device identifier, timestamp, latitude, longitude, gender, country, age, income level, tier1, tier2, and technical provenance fields.

Data provenance and authorization

The original mobility data source was provided for academic research through LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C. in the framework of the service contract signed between LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C. and Universidad de Sonora on September 14, 2020, in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico.

LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C. granted authorization for the mobility data analyzed under this framework to be used in academic research articles and to be made available as Open Data in an open access repository.

Any publication, derivative dataset, software, or analytical product using these data must acknowledge LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C. as the provider of the original mobility data source for academic purposes.

Responsible use

The dataset contains persistent device-level identifiers, timestamps, and GPS coordinates. These fields are necessary for scientific analysis of mobility patterns over time and space, but they must be handled as sensitive mobility information.

GPS pings should not be interpreted as deterministic evidence that a person was located at an exact physical point at an exact instant. Consecutive pings associated with the same device may exhibit short-range spatial variability over seconds or minutes, reflecting device-level positioning uncertainty, application-level recording behavior, signal conditions, and data-processing effects. The coordinates should therefore be interpreted as GPS observations rather than exact statements of physical presence.

The studies derived from this dataset did not rely on exact point-level identification of places or individuals. Instead, the analyses aggregated mobility information to larger spatial units such as AGEBs, urban zones, or patch-based regions, where small-scale GPS variability does not materially affect the conclusions.

Users of this dataset must not attempt to identify, re-identify, contact, profile, locate, or infer sensitive personal routines of any individual, household, workplace, or device owner. The dataset is released for scientific, educational, methodological, and public-interest research purposes.

Dataset creators

Jesús Francisco Espinoza Fierro
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5601-3634

José Arturo Montoya Laos
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6952-0109

Lilia Leticia Ramírez Ramírez
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9469-0887

Juan Pablo Soto Barrera
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6107-1097

Publisher and maintainer

Publisher: Universidad de Sonora.

Publishing organization: Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad de Sonora.

Maintainer: Jesús Francisco Espinoza Fierro.

Maintainer email: jesusfrancisco.espinoza@unison.mx.

Data provider: LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C.

Recommended citation

Espinoza Fierro, Jesús Francisco; Montoya Laos, José Arturo; Ramírez Ramírez, Lilia Leticia; Soto Barrera, Juan Pablo. (2026). Mobile Phone GPS Mobility Data for COVID-19 Research in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico, 2020. Version 1.0.0. Universidad de Sonora. Data source provided by LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C.

Related publications

Ramírez-Ramírez, Lilia Leticia; Montoya, José A.; Espinoza, Jesús F.; Mehta, Chahak; Akuno, Albert Orwa; Bui-Thanh, Tan. (2025). Use of mobile phone sensing data to estimate residence and occupation times in urban patches: human mobility restrictions and the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak in Hermosillo, Mexico. Computational Urban Science, 5, 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43762-025-00168-y

Akuno, Albert Orwa; Ramírez-Ramírez, Lilia Leticia; Espinoza, Jesús F. (2023). Inference on a Multi-Patch Epidemic Model with Partial Mobility, Residency, and Demography: Case of the 2020 COVID-19 Outbreak in Hermosillo, Mexico. Entropy, 25, 968. https://doi.org/10.3390/e25070968

License

This dataset is made available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Users may share and adapt the material, provided that appropriate credit is given to the dataset creators, Universidad de Sonora is identified as the publisher, and LUMEX CONSULTORES, S.C. is acknowledged as the provider of the original mobility data source.