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.

To give an example of how to work with the data: If you are a researcher interested in studies published on the topic of “pop-up active transport infrastructure”, you can simply use the search function in the “Studies & Research” table to look for this term (fig. 5). Then you will see that two studies within the theme of “Active Mobility” and one study within the theme of “Urban Structure” have dealt with the topic. If nothing can be found, have a glance at the table “Themes & Variables” (fig. 4), perhaps a group of variables with slightly different wording already exists. For a better overview, the table “Research & Publications” is grouped by the themes; however, it is possible to make your own views of the data in a grid or other form (left side of the view) and delete them again. Like this, a subdivision of the studies into, for example, continents of research focus (fig. 6), is possible and can be modified according to the interest of the user. After you’ve been searching for the relevant studies dealing with “pop-up active transport infrastructure” (i.e., three publications), you can get more familiar with their particular research focus by scanning their titles, methods, variables, and main outcomes and see if they might help you with your project. Don’t forget to check the table “Other Sources & Projects” for further information, too. In this case, a very useful database to track immediate community actions is available on Pedbike.

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