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By Malcolm Owen
Tuesday, April 14, 2020, 10:11 am PT (01:11 pm ET)
Apple has begun offering mobility trend reports stemming from Apple Maps requests, in an attempt to show how people are changing their travel habits and staying indoors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Revealed Tuesday, the page within Apple’s COVID-19 site provides users with line charts showing address requests on Apple Maps. Rather than showing actual application numbers, the table indicates changes in the number of applications made over time, allowing percentage-based comparisons between populations.
The default view of the graph provides results for the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy, with a search box that allows users to limit the data by country, region, or city. Drilling down into a specific area also refines the graph, so instead of showing an overall change in the results, it narrows the results down to the driving, walking, and transit categories.
Along with the graph, the page also offers the full dataset as a download, complete with daily changes in requests by type of transportation, covering all available countries, regions, and cities.
The ultimate goal of the table is “to provide useful information to local governments and health authorities” affected by the coronavirus pandemic “, and can also be used as the basis for new public policies by showing the change in the volume of people driving , walk or take public transportation in their communities. ”
Apple wants to emphasize how it ensures user privacy for the chart, which includes adding data before including it in the chart to reflect activity in a region, not an individual. “Data collected by Maps, such as search terms, navigation routing, and traffic information, is associated with randomly rotating rotary identifiers that are continually reset, so Apple doesn’t have a profile of your movements and searches,” he says. the company.
While protecting your privacy, we share aggregated mobility data from Apple Maps to help public health authorities learn how people travel in their communities and provide valuable information to stop the spread of COVID-19. Stay safe and healthy! https://t.co/Nok77HKIXN
– Tim Cook (@tim_cook) April 14, 2020
The results are independent of the joint effort between Apple and Google to track contacts with applications, developing APIs that use Bluetooth to identify if people have been very close to those who may be carrying the virus, while ensuring user privacy. .
Apple has streamlined the process for healthcare providers to add lists to Apple Maps to show where COVID-19 test sites are located. The default searches within Apple Maps have also been updated, pointing out to users the services they are most likely to request during the period of social distance and requests to stay home.
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