Since all news seems to be COVID-19 focused, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Google is on the job. This interesting news came to us from CNBC in their article, “New Google site shows where people in a community are taking social distancing seriously — and where they’re not.”
Google launched a new website that uses anonymous location data collected from users of Google products and services to show the level of social distancing taking place in various locations. Social distancing has been defined as increasing the physical proximity between people to at least six feet, and limited gatherings of more than 5 people.
The COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports website will show population data trends of six categories: Retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential. The data will track changes over the course of several weeks, and as recent as 48-to-72 hours prior, and will initially cover 131 countries as well as individual counties within certain states.
The data is being collected on an aggregate level, not individually. The preliminary results are showing some good signs. San Francisco County has seen a 72% drop in retail and recreation, a 55% decline in parks’ population, and a 21% increase in residential population between Feb. 16 and March 29.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Data Harmony, a unit of Access Innovations, the world leader in indexing and making content findable.
