English

Mobility Changes in Response to COVID-19

Social and Information Networks 2020-04-01 v1 Computers and Society

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/

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.14228,
  title  = {Mobility Changes in Response to COVID-19},
  author = {Michael S. Warren and Samuel W. Skillman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.14228},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

6 pages, 9 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:33:50.004Z