Due to the unfortunate spread of COVID 19, the lockdown was announced in India. The mobility was restricted by late March. According to the mobility data reports from Apple Maps, it is revealed that driving in India dropped down by 80 percent and walking by 75 percent by mid-April.
Apple stated that the data is collected by recording the number of Apple Maps routing requests enabled on all iPhone models and contrasting them with the previous usage in order to identify the number of people driving, walking, traveling, or taking public transport worldwide.
Lockdown has resulted in a great change in New Delhi. We have experienced 83per cent drop on the data for walking and 86 percent for the driving on April 13th. It was calculated by the requests sent in for directions in Apple Maps.
Mumbai, too had a drastic outcome where driving decreased by 89% and walking by 84% on April 13th. It is unbelievable, but true. These two cities experienced most of the traffic on a daily basis as compared to other cities.
The reports suggest any form of transport was collectively calculated and full data included regular updates to request for mobility directions for major cities and 63 countries and regions.
Apple hopes that such mobility data can provide local authorities and health authorities with valuable information and can also provide the basis of new policies by showing a changing number of people in their communities who drive, walk or use public transport.
In addition to this, Apple also revealed that a variety of factors which also include minimum thresholds requests made per day for direction contribute to data availability in a particular city, country, or region.
Apple’s data is pretty limited to what Google has made available to public health officials.
Two weeks ago, comparative data was published by Google, where the pages like grocery stores, entertainment sites, travel stations, and workplaces were taken into consideration. It was done by over 131 countries a period of around five weeks earlier this year.
Countries like the United States, the orders for lockdown are issued by county officials, and with reference to this, Google offers the county-level data, which is very helpful to them.
To know more about the new data type or trends, Apple chooses to work with public health officials.
