Enhancing urban resilience in the pandemic era using travel behavior and activity Big Data in Korea

Keywords: Urban resilience, pandemic, Big data, Travel and urban activity, South Korea
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 31

Abstract

The academic community has recognized the importance of creating a safe and healthy urban environment in terms of resilient urban planning policy and management since pandemic. The individual and aggregated urban travel activity Big data are essential in developing pandemic-resilient planning policies because researchers can identify urban activity hotspots and evaluate COVID 19 vulnerability in urban areas.
In this study, we empirically examine the spatiotemporal changes of urban activity patterns from January 2019 to December 2020 by using travel mobility Big-data in Deagu Metropolitan city, Korea, to enhance urban resilience in a post-pandemic era. We discuss how the physical (land use patterns, urban access, and environmental factors) and non-physical factors (socio-cultural and economic factors) would contribute to a different capacity building of urban resilience in the post-pandemic era. We evaluated the impact on the geographic shifts of activity hotspots and socio-economic changes on local communities after the COVID-19 outbreak.

The results suggest that effective social distancing measures effectively mitigate the vulnerability by reducing daily activity travels and shifting core urban activity locations to non-crowded land use areas such as green public spaces with a low risk of transmission COVID-19; however, commercial business districts are affected significantly in economic viability due to slow recovery in the long run. Finally, we discuss the policy implications and effective strategies to enhance urban resiliency in the post-Covid-19 era.

Acknowledgment: This work is supported by the Korea Agency for Infrastructure Technology Advancement grant funded by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (Grant 21TSRD-B151228-03).