Mobility Changes in Response to COVID-19

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how COVID-19 prompted significant reductions in human mobility worldwide, using anonymized mobile device data to quantify behavioral changes and government impacts during the pandemic.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale analysis of mobility changes during COVID-19 using mobile device data, providing publicly available datasets at multiple administrative levels.

Findings

Large mobility reductions detected globally and in the US.

Mobility decreases correlated with COVID-19 threat onset and government directives.

Mobility data made publicly available for further research.

Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, both voluntary changes in behavior and administrative restrictions on human interactions have occurred. These actions are intended to reduce the transmission rate of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). We use anonymized and/or de-identified mobile device locations to measure mobility, a statistic representing the distance a typical member of a given population moves in a day. Results indicate that a large reduction in mobility has taken place, both in the US and globally. In the United States, large mobility reductions have been detected associated with the onset of the COVID-19 threat and specific government directives. Mobility data at the US admin1 (state) and admin2 (county) level have been made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license via the GitHub repository https://github.com/descarteslabs/DL-COVID-19/