Google mobility
Description
The Google mobility database represents human mobility given by the Google trends, which reports how human mobility is affected by the COVID-19 spread since February 15th, 2020.
The data compares the visits to places, such as grocery stores and parks, with a baseline calculated before the pandemic starts. It is measured the percentage of people that visited a place in relation to the same day of the week during the period of Jan 3–Feb 6, 2020.
The places considered in the database are:
- Grocery & pharmacy: grocery markets, food warehouses, farmers markets, specialty food shops, drug stores, and pharmacies;
- Parks: local parks, national parks, public beaches, marinas, dog parks, plazas, and public gardens;
- Transit stations: subway, bus, and train stations;
- Retail & recreation: restaurants, cafes, shopping centers, theme parks, museums, libraries, and movie theaters;
- Residential: places of residence;
- Workplaces: places of work;
Data access information
The data and documentation are available at Google Mobility.
Methods of data collection
A Python code is available on our Github directory to download the data from Google Mobility. The database updates every day containing data as recent as 2 days ago. Additional information on data collection methods can be found in Google Mobility Documentation and Github.
Data-specific information
The Google Mobility for the Brazilian dataset has a total of 15 columns and shows a total of 590,690 registries (rows) and a size of 57Mb, accessed Oct 19, 2021. A code with more details about the variables, data processing, and analysis methods is presented in our Github directory.
Limitations of dataset
The results were calculated based on a sample of users that allowed location history to track their position, which may create biases. The categories of places may also vary depending on location is not recommended to compare regions very different for example rural vs urban. When the statistically significant levels are not sufficient for a certain place and date, the field will be left with no data.