Abstract
AbstractThe COVID-19 lockdown has unprecedently affected the dynamics of our society. As traffic flow is a good proxy for societal activity, traffic monitoring becomes a useful tool to assess the lockdown’s impacts. Here we turned two strands of unused telecommunication fibers in Pasadena, California into a seismic array of ~5,000 sensors and detected ground vibrations caused by moving vehicles along the streets above the cable. We monitor the number of vehicles and their mean speed between December 2019 and August 2020 in high spatial and temporal resolution, and then analyze the traffic patterns change due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Our results show a city-wide decline in traffic volume and an increase in speed due to the lockdown, although the level of impact varies substantially by streets. This study demonstrates the feasibility of using telecommunication fiber optic cables in traffic monitoring, which has implications for public health, economy, and transportation safety.
Funder
National Science Foundation
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences,General Environmental Science
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