People Movement Index

To help us all understand how we are staying safe, PlaceDashboard’s location insight is tracking the change in movement behaviour patterns in city centres across the UK.

Each week PlaceDashboard is publishing  a people movement index to measure the success of the stay at home government instruction. The base line for the index is Monday 23rd March 2020, with an index number of 100. We forecast the index to significanty fall during the lockdown period and then start to increase and move above the 100 index level as the lockdown is gradually relaxed. We have calculated two distinct behaviour movement indices, ‘Total Movement’ and ‘Walking/Cycling’ which is achieved by isolating devices which are travelling between 3 and 10 miles per hour.

Central London

23rd vs 30th March 2020 
Total people index change: Down -37%
Walking movement index change: Down -51.0%

23rd March vs 6th April 2020 
Total people index change: Down -38%
Walking movement index change: Down -50%

23rd March vs 13th April 2020 
Total people index change: Down -51%
Walking movement index change: Down -55%

23rd March vs 20th April 2020 
Total people index change: Down -36%
Walking movement index change: Down -31%

23rd March vs 27th April 2020 
Total people index change: Down -35%
Walking movement index change: Down -29%

The Covid 19 lockdown started on Monday 23rd March 2020. The PlaceDashboard Total People movement index for 27th April 2020 shows there are -35% less people moving around the centre of London since the lockdown commenced. The volume of walking  has contracted by -29%,  there has been a +11 change in the index since the first week of lockdown increase.

People Movement Heat Map

PlaceDashboard is able to measure social distancing by tracking gps location data captured from my mobile phones. Unlike footfall counters PlaceDashboard is able to track precise movement patters across an entire city centre and identigy high and low movement activity areas visualised as a column heatmap.

The image above shows some of the changes in movement behaviour for the City of London, Oxford Street /Regent Street and Westminster between the 23rd and 25th March.

The images below show the changes in people movement behaviour in key areas of central London between Monday 23rd March (start of lock down) and Wednesday 25th March.

If you require analysis regarding the changes in people movement behaviour in your town or city centre during the Covid-19 lock down please contact us here.