COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports for 593 Cities, February–October 2020

Google's COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports provide aggregated, anonymized data from Android users with Location History enabled. The dataset captures weekly changes in mobility relative to a January 2020 baseline across categories like workplace, residential, transit hubs, parks, retail, and grocery. It covers 593 cities in 43 countries from February to October 2020.

Use Cases

• Model the relationship between public health policies and mobility changes based on weekly trend data.
• Analyze shifts in activity patterns across different location categories like retail, parks, and workplaces.
• Compare pandemic mobility responses across different cities and countries based on the 43-country coverage.

Strengths

• Covers 593 cities across 43 countries, providing a broad geographic scope.
• Provides a consistent baseline for comparison using a 5-week median from January 2020.
• Data is aggregated and anonymized, addressing some privacy concerns.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic and device bias inherent to its source (Android users with Location History on).

Provenance

Source

Google

Collection Method

Aggregated, anonymized sets of data from Android users with Location History enabled.

Time Range

February to October 2020, with a baseline from January 3 to February 6, 2020.

Freshness

Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Geography

593 cities in 43 countries.