Research Paper: Assessing Early Public Response to COVID-19-Related Restrictions in New York City Using Spatial Analysis of Urban Mobility Data

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Check out this work by @Emily_McGill_University titled, Assessing Early Public Response to COVID-19-Related Restrictions in New York City Using Spatial Analysis of Urban Mobility Data. Congratulations Emily for completing yours honors thesis - great work! :tada:

Several studies of social distancing policies and adherence have a wide scope, comparing metropolitan cities to each other or looking at rural vs urban behavior. In this paper, Emily zooms in on New York City to analyze the relationship between social distancing behavior and socio-demographic factors. This approach relies on less assumptions about potential confounders, such as local policies, weather, local infection rates, or even cost of living. She assesses the relationships between socio-demographic factors (age, race, transport method to work, etc) and four measures of social distance activity (travel distance, home dwell, non-home dwell, and percent of time spent at home).

Go here to read the full publication! :point_left:

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Hey @Emily_McGill_University! It’s always interesting to learn how researchers select the “baseline” period for their studies. It looks like you used the first two weeks of February 2020 to compare to the first two weeks of April 2020. What were the considerations when making that decision? I’m wondering if NYC had their first positive case of COVID-19 around early February, could that have influenced some people’s social distancing prior to any government mandates? Similarly, considering that it was winter during the baseline period, would it be reasonable to check that there were no major snow storms in that time? I could imagine a situation where higher income NYC residents are able to reduce their travel during winter storms more than lower income ones, for example.