Google starts publishing smartphone location data to test coronavirus lockdown strategy
Google's Community Mobility Reports cover anonymised data from 131 countries
Google has released location data for users in 131 countries including the UK to help governments evaluate the effectiveness of confinement and social distancing measures being imposed to fight the spread of coronavirus in communities.
According to Google, the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports have been prepared using anonymous location data collected from users of Google products and services across 131 countries.
"The Community Mobility Reports were developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and protecting people's privacy," the company said. "No personally identifiable information, such as an individual's location, contacts or movement will be made available at any point."
Google's Community Mobile Reports include charts that compare movement of people from 16th February to 29th March at various locations with a five-week period earlier this year. The locations have been divided into six categories: grocery and pharmacy, retail and recreation, transit stations, parks, workplaces, and residential.
The published reports contain data as recent as 24 to 72 hours old.
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They are based on data collected in aggregate form, rather than at an individual level. That means the reports don't reveal the absolute numbers of people gathering at a specific location, but rather, show percentages to suggest potential spikes in people's attendance.
For example, Google's first report for Italy showed that visits to retail and recreation places during the period from 16th February to 29th March dropped 94 per cent, while visits to grocery and pharmacy plunged by 85 per cent.
Similarly, the report for California, where a shelter in place directive was ordered on 19th March, showed that people cut their visits to retail and recreation locations by nearly 50 per cent.
The move from Google has come at the time when government agencies and health officials have been asking tech firms to share more data to help fight the spread of coronavirus in cities.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that mobile advertising companies have started sharing anonymised, aggregated data with the state and local governments as well as with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to aid officials coordinate their response against the disease.
People in China, South Korea and Singapore have been asked by government agencies to use technology to track their compliance with quarantines.
Facebook has made similar mobile location data available to a group of 40 academic researchers, who are using to provide daily updates to US cities and states about the effectiveness of their social distancing orders.
The COVID-19 Mobility Data Network, which includes researchers from Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins and other universities, is sharing only broad findings with state and local health departments, and not providing any raw data to governments.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also told reporters last month that he is not considering any plan to share Facebook's data directly with governments.