03. November 2020 I Paulina Fried I Urban Mobility Futures, UvA

With the following data collection of studies on COVID-19 and impacts on human mobility and visualisation in Airtable, researchers can orientate themselves in the research areas and get a quick and well-structured picture of current interests in science and public debates. Research collaboration and continuous updating of the data can support efficient and relevant research efforts that focus on the most urgent and underrepresented issues.

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The overview

To collect the most relevant and current studies on COVID-19 and its impacts on human mobility, and to give an overview of existing research areas as well as potential gaps, I conducted a scoping study from September 9 to October 9, 2020. The results are presented via the platform Airtable. The created workspace “COVID-19 and Mobility” at the moment of writing consists of one publicly available base with three tables (“Studies & Research”, “Themes & Variables”, and “Other Sources & Projects”). The first table “Studies & Research” (fig. 2) presents a collection of 86 academic and non-academic publications. All publications are specified by their title, author(s), the continent they cover, scope/sample they use, study design, methods, main result/outcome, study period, publication date, type of publication, and link to the source. The table contains variables that resulted from my study and assessment of priority issues. These are additionally listed in the second table, “Themes & Variables” (fig. 3), and are grouped in themes. I defined 16 themes that the studies deal with: Active Mobility, Air Traffic, COVID-19, Data & Digitalization, Future Prospects, Human Health, Individual Behaviour, Limitations & Restrictions, Mobility Flows, Mobility Measures & Models, Physical Mobility Infrastructure, Policies, Social and Economic Aspects, Society, Urban Structure, and Work & Commuting. The reason for assigning a specific study to a thematic field is based on my own assessment of the main focus of the publication, often attributed to their title or abstract. With the invitation for other researchers to upload publications to the base, the themes and their variables can be adjusted, or new ones added at any time. The last table “Other Sources & Projects” (fig. 4) contains a collection of mobility actions or other relevant databases classified by eleven different focus areas. This collection has a focus on practice-oriented, small-scale activities and their opportunities for cities and their citizens.

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