The SARS epidemic of 2003, the 2009 influenza pandemic and the recent Ebola outbreak in Western Africa have highlighted the capacity for infectious pathogens to spread quickly over large distances, sometimes between continents. Besides these spreading events, there are other, slower processes also involving population mobility. For instance, in Western Canada there are instances where vaccine coverage varies greatly between large urban areas and smaller rural communities.

I will begin with an introduction about population mobility, then discuss a method for modelling this type of spatio-temporal issues, so-called metapopulation models. I will then show examples of the use of this method in various contexts.