Sun Qianqian, Zhou Weiyi, Kabiri Aliakbar, Darzi Aref, Hu Songhua, Younes Hannah, Zhang Lei
Maryland Transportation Institute (MTI), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Maryland 8228 Paint Branch Dr College Park MD 20742 USA.
Reg Sci Policy Prac. 2022 Dec 5. doi: 10.1111/rsp3.12598.
Mobility interventions in communities play a critical role in containing a pandemic at an early stage. The real-world practice of social distancing can enlighten policymakers and help them implement more efficient and effective control measures. A lack of such research using real-world observations initiates this article. We analyzed the social distancing performance of 66,149 census tracts from 3,142 counties in the United States with a specific focus on income profile. Six daily mobility metrics, including a social distancing index, stay-at-home percentage, miles traveled per person, trip rate, work trip rate, and non-work trip rate, were produced for each census tract using the location data from over 100 million anonymous devices on a monthly basis. Each mobility metric was further tabulated by three perspectives of social distancing performance: "best performance," "effort," and "consistency." We found that for all 18 indicators, high-income communities demonstrated better social distancing performance. Such disparities between communities of different income levels are presented in detail in this article. The comparisons across scenarios also raise other concerns for low-income communities, such as employment status, working conditions, and accessibility to basic needs. This article lays out a series of facts extracted from real-world data and offers compelling perspectives for future discussions.
社区中的流动性干预措施在疫情早期防控中起着关键作用。社交距离的实际做法可以启发政策制定者，并帮助他们实施更高效、更有效的控制措施。正是由于缺乏此类基于现实观察的研究，才有了本文。我们分析了美国3142个县的66149个人口普查区的社交距离表现，特别关注收入情况。利用来自1亿多个匿名设备的每月位置数据，为每个人口普查区生成了六个每日流动性指标，包括社交距离指数、居家百分比、人均出行英里数、出行率、工作出行率和非工作出行率。每个流动性指标还从社交距离表现的三个角度进一步列表分析：“最佳表现”、“努力程度”和“一致性”。我们发现，在所有18个指标上，高收入社区都表现出更好的社交距离表现。本文详细介绍了不同收入水平社区之间的这种差异。不同情景之间的比较也引发了对低收入社区的其他担忧，如就业状况、工作条件和基本需求的可及性。本文列出了一系列从现实世界数据中提取的事实，并为未来的讨论提供了有说服力的观点。
