Wisconsin gets a ‘B’ in social distancing based on mobile data
Good job, Wisconsin.
Even before the beginning of Gov. Tony Evers’ order to stay at home, Wisconsinites have drastically changed their habits, embracing the tactic of social distancing during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. The temporary closure of businesses, shift to working from home, lack of traffic and more are signs of the times, but the hard evidence related to social distancing has been in your pockets all along.
Unacast, a location data and analytics firm based in Norway and New York, has utilized data culled from mobile phones to create a “Social Distancing Scoreboard,” assigning countries, states and counties a letter grade for their change in average distance traveled.
Wisconsin earned a “B” rating for decreasing its average distance traveled by 39.91% — slightly more than the national average.
That grade was not uniform across the state, though. Each county earned its own grade, with over 25 earning A’s as of an update on Tuesday that included charted data up to March 21. Sawyer (57% decrease in distance traveled), Menominee (51% decrease), Buffalo (51% decrease), Milwaukee (49% decrease) and Green (48% decrease) counties represented the top five in the state.
The only F’s in the state went to Juneau (8% increase) and Dunn (18% increase) counties, areas that also currently only have one confirmed coronavirus case between them.
Three surrounding states have Wisconsin beat according to Unacast’s metrics. Minnesota (46% decrease), Michigan (45% decrease) and Illinois (40% decrease) all earned “A” grades. Indiana garnered a “B,” slightly below Wisconsin, while Iowa and Missouri both received “C” grades.
According to Unacast, average distance traveled — as opposed to tracking time spent in and around the home or changes in activity clusters — was the best measure for social distancing.
“The metric correlates well with the number of confirmed cases: the more cases are confirmed, the greater the decrease in the average distance traveled on the county level,” Unacast CEO and co-founder Thomas Walle wrote in a blog post.
So how did Unacast gather all of this information? You let them have it.
When you opt-in to give information to apps to play a game or shop, that information can be sold to third parties. Company spokesperson Jeanne Meyer told the Detroit Free Press that to create its COVID-19 tool kit, Unacast used public data sets, location information and App data provided through third parties to create its social distancing map pro bono and for the greater good. The company plans to roll out more COVID-19 data analysis as well.
This data cannot single out any individual person, device or household. Unacast adheres to industry guidelines to ensure individual privacy is not breached.