How Efficient Are Restrictions in the Corona Crisis? Google provides publicly available knowledge with an analysis of anonymized movement data.
Paris - Big Data meets the Corona Crisis - after the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) received an anonymized data set from Telekom a few days ago to evaluate the mobility of Germans, the public is now getting an insight into that "Big dates" of the corona pandemic. In response to the spread of the novel coronavirus Sars-CoV-2, the US internet giant Google publishes an analysis of the movement data of its global users.
An analysis of data from 131 countries has been available online since Friday (March 29, 2020), the company said. This should enable governments worldwide to check the effectiveness of measures to avoid social contacts. According to Google, the statistics show to what extent people have restricted visits to parks, shops, houses or trips to work.
New from @Google: As of today, the first beta version of the “Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports” is available worldwide.https: //t.co/l4StoIEb9u # covid19 1 / pic.twitter.com/QtzSE5bhKi
- Lutz Mache #wirsindderosten (@lutzmache) April 3, 2020Corona crisis: Google evaluates "aggregated and anonymized" data
According to Google, "aggregated and anonymized" data from users who have consented to the storage of their location information are used, similar to the RKI data set. According to Google, conclusions about the movement profile of individual users should not be possible. However, diagrams are intended to show how people have changed their behavior overall due to the pandemic.
The percentage change is shown, but not the total number of visits. In Germany, visits to restaurants, cafes, shopping centers, museums and cinemas were 77 percent lower than usual. According to statistics, the number of supermarkets, drugstores and pharmacies increased in the meantime, and then decreased by 51 percent by the end of March.
Corona crisis: Google data broken down by federal state
The rashes were even greater for public parks and gardens. Visits increased significantly in mid-March and then decreased by 49 percent at the end of the month. According to the statistics, public transport is also used much less. Instead, people apparently stay at home more often; movement data for apartments and houses show an increase of eleven percent. Google data is also broken down by region, statistics for Germany can be viewed for each federal state.
"We hope these reports will help make decisions about how to deal with the Covid 19 pandemic," said Jen Fitzpatrick, director of Google Maps, and Google health officer Karen DeSalvo.
Corona crisis: Numerous countries use cell phone data
Numerous countries such as China, South Korea and Israel are already relying heavily on the evaluation of cell phone data in the fight against the corona virus. Data protection and human rights activists see this as a threat to the privacy of citizens and warn of a breach in the surveillance system. In Germany, the use of a so-called tracking app is currently being discussed *, via which users can voluntarily transmit their location data.
jjm / afp
* fr.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network.
