  This work introduces a new concept of functional areas called Mobility
Functional Areas (MFAs), i.e., the geographic zones highly interconnected
according to the analysis of mobile positioning data. The MFAs do not coincide
necessarily with administrative borders as they are built observing natural
human mobility and, therefore, they can be used to inform, in a bottom-up
approach, local transportation, spatial planning, health and economic policies.
After presenting the methodology behind the MFAs, this study focuses on the
link between the COVID-19 pandemic and the MFAs in Austria. It emerges that the
MFAs registered an average number of infections statistically larger than the
areas in the rest of the country, suggesting the usefulness of the MFAs in the
context of targeted re-escalation policy responses to this health crisis. The
MFAs dataset is openly available to other scholars for further analyses.
