The Networked Community of Urban Mobility during the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered urban mobility patterns as various travel restrictions were imposed at different stages of the pandemic. Such dynamics inevitably affect the structure of urban spatial interactions underlying disease spreading. Understanding the spatial interaction structure and its dynamics is crucial for disease control. Through detecting networked communities, we identified latent movement boundaries emerged from actual human movement flows. We analyzed intra- and intercommunity flows that not only capture the regional and cross-region urban mobility structures but also facilitate the expansion and relocation diffusion processes. Networks representing four snapshots (prepandemic, lockdown, transition, and normal) were analyzed. The intracommunity flow intensities indicated similar patterns across four snapshots, suggesting the relative stability of the local expansion diffusion patterns throughout the study period. The intercommunity analysis showed the changes of spatial interaction intensities within the city, signifying the dynamic of the cross-regions disease spreading. Analyzing the intra- and intercommunity network structures provided a more holistic understanding of the dynamic urban mobility structures during the pandemic, highlighting the potential disease diffusion processes. This framework can also be used for disease management strategies simulation and future mobility-related urban planning.