The Impact of COVID-19 on Relative Changes in Aggregated Mobility Using Mobile-phone Data

Abstract

Mobile-phone data can be used to investigate the mobility of a big part of a population in a given period. Here we have analyzed this information for Austria in the first half year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Especially the period around the first lockdown was of interest, and our focus is on exploring possible differences between age groups and among females and males. The data is once treated from an absolute point of view, by analyzing the numbers as they are reported and from a relative point of view, with the help of compositional data analysis tools. Our goal is to compare analyses of the absolute values and of relative information, in order to reveal possible differences in the groups formed by age and gender. It turns out that both types of analyses provide different and partially complementary insights. This is also underlined when analyzing data from call durations, or subdata just for specific Austrian districts.