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’ which is achieved by isolating devices which are travelling between 3 and 10 miles per hour.

People in City Centres for the week 20/4/20 – 27/4/20

The Covid 19 lockdown started on Monday 23rd March 2020. The PlaceDashboard ‘City Centre ‘People Index’ tracks the total number of people recorded in a city centre during a seven day period.

For the period 20th April 2020 -27th April the index shows a small increase in the number of people in the city centre compared to the first week of lockdown. The volume of individuals using city centres is currently stable.

          Week one lockdown vs current week
index change

Cardiff                                                                     +4
Edinburgh                                                              +1
Leeds                                                                      +1
London                                                                   +2
Manchester                                                           +2

Walking in City Centres for the week 20/4/20 – 27/4/20

The Covid 19 lockdown started on Monday 23rd March 2020. The PlaceDashboard ‘Walking Index’ tracks the volume of walking recorded in city centre during a seven day period.

For the period 20th  – 27th April the index shows an increase in city centre walking for Leeds, London and Ediburgh since the start of lockdown and a weekly increase for last seven days. Cardiff walking activity is still below the volumes recorded in the first week of lockdown, however the decreasing a narrowed by 2 index points to -7 during the last week. Manchester has recorded a significant fall in walking volumes during the last week dropping from 53 to 40.

Week one lockdown vs current week
index change

Cardiff                                                                     -7 
Edinburgh                                                              +16 
Leeds                                                                      +5
London                                                                   +22
Manchester                                                           -10