Simulating COVID-19
In the early days of the corona pandemic in Austria, the Vienna Science and Technology Fund WWTF made a call for COVID-19 related research projects (The WWTF COVID-19 Rapid Response Call).
One of the succesful projects, called “Synthesis Of Disease Spread And Network Reduction Data For Covid-19 Simulation,” was filed by Allan Hanbury (TU Wien & CSH Faculty). The project was a collaboration between TU Wien and the CSH; dwh GmbH; SpotOn Statistics GmbH; and Statistik Austria.
“The pipeline created in this project illustrates a very fruitful collaboration between government administration, business, and research in obtaining insights the support the response to a crisis,” says the Final Report. “It should serve as a starting point for further collaborations also in non-crisis times.”
Find here the Final Report of the project with all the details and results.
Mobility patterns during first lockdown
CSH researchers were investigating several questions as part of this project.
One was an quantitative assessment of lockdown effects in March 2020 for all regions in Austria. The analyses of mobility patterns of the Austrian population used near-real-time anonymized mobile phone data. The Hub started to publish its mobility analyses in April 2020 and continuously updated the results.
Behavioral Gender Differences are Reinforced during the COVID-19 Crisis
The anonymized mobile phone data from 1.2 million devices in Austria (15 percent of the population) also showed stark differences in gender-specific behavioral patterns of communication intensity, mobility, and circadian rhythms.
“After the lock-down,” says the preprint of Tobias Reisch, Georg Heiler, Jan Hurt, Peter Klimek, Allan Hanbury, and Stefan Thurner, “gender differences in mobility and communication patterns increased massively, while sleeping patterns and circadian rhythms tend to synchronize.”
For instance, women had fewer but longer phone calls than men during the first lockdown. Mobility declined massively for both genders, however, women tended to restrict their movement stronger than men. Women showed a stronger tendency to avoid shopping centres, while more men frequented recreational areas. After the lock-down, males returned back to normal quicker than women; young age-cohorts return much quicker.
For more details of the investigation, follow this link to the preprint.