The disturbance of urban mobility in the context of COVID-19 pandemic: Fid-Bau Portal

The disturbance of urban mobility in the context of COVID-19 pandemic

You, Geonhwa

Abstract Since the COVID-19 outbreaks, extensive studies have focused on mobility changes to demonstrate the pandemic effect; some studies identified remarkable mobility declines and revealed a negative relationship between mobility and the number of COVID-19 cases. However, counter-arguments have been raised, exemplifying insignificant variations, recuperated travel frequency, and transitory decline effect. This paper copes with this contentious issue, analyzing time series mobility data in comprehensive timelines. The assessment of the pandemic effect builds on significant change rate (SCR) ceilings and the density of the semantic outliers derived from the kernel-based approach. The comparison between pre- and post-pandemic periods indicated that mobility decline pervaded Australia, Europe, New York, New Zealand, and Seoul. However, the degree of the effect was alleviated over time, showing decreased/increased SCR ceilings of negative/positive outliers. The changes in resulting outlier density and SCR ceilings corroborated that the pandemic outbreaks did not lead to persistent mobility decline. The findings provide useful insights for predicting epidemics and setting appropriate restrictions and transportation systems in urban areas.

Highlights • With current debates on the COVID-19 effect, this article aims to assess the pandemic disturbances on intercity and international mobility. • During the first pandemic year, the mobility decline became apparent in NY, Europe, AU (walking), NZ (driving), and SU (22:00–05:59), but it did not persist. • In the following year, AU, Europe, and NZ recuperated mobility, showing greater SCR levels and SCR ceilings of POs. • The findings corroborate that the increased COVID-19 severity and anti-coronavirus restriction did not intensify mobility reduction.