Human mobility properties during the COVID-19 community quarantine using an origin-destination data

Abstract

Human mobility is a significant portion of urban dynamics, affecting policy on transportation, urban planning, and even emergency public health-related situations. Understanding the changes in mobility during social emergencies such as community quarantine implementations during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical for mitigating virus spread. In this paper, we report scale-free properties of mobility in both national and local scales obtained based on an origin-destination aggregate dataset. Power law distributions of mobility intensities in the Philippines are present in both the national and local (NCR) levels. The national level (inter-regional) mobility patterns followed a consistent power law distribution with unit exponent, while barangay-level patterns exhibited a steeper decline with an exponent of 1.80. A roll-over regime is noted present in local mobility, likely due to the inherent undersampling in the data. The probability density functions are somewhat predicted by a fragmentation model is able to model the basic transfer dynamics with much room for improvement.