Exploring human mobility and activity patterns before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic

Keywords: human mobility, SafeGraph, Point of Interest, spatiotemporal data analysis
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Our society has significantly changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as stay-at-home orders, overnight curfews, facility closure, lockdowns, and reopening decisions have made major impacts on people’s everyday life. While the pandemic continues to affect our society, we enter its fourth year, and a sense of normalcy has returned. However, are we returning to the pre-pandemic normal, or is it a new normal? What has and has not changed before, during, and after the pandemic? Understanding the impact of the pandemic on our society and our responses is crucial for future mitigation. To answer those questions, one way is to leverage unprecedented access to big mobility data provided by technology companies. In this research, we utilize SafeGraph Point Of Interests (POIs) data and employ spatiotemporal data analytics to explore how human mobility flow and activity patterns have changed before, during, and after the pandemic. We categorize POIs using their respective NAICS code and analyze the number of visits to each POI to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected mobility and activity patterns over time across these categories.