Spatiotemporal Analysis of Share Bike Usage during the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Case Study of Beijing.

During the epidemics of COVID-19, not only China but the whole world is experiencing a serious crisis on public health and economy, and the epidemics have become pandemic. As estimating the overall loss and the effectiveness of preventive measures in China is a complex task, we try to reveal the behavior change of people over time & space in order to infer the impact on daily life of and overall economy. Spatiotemporal behavior patterns can be reflected by share bike usage because great majority of Chinese urban residents use share bikes to connect public transports and both ends of travel. Taking records of Bike Sharing Systems (BSSs) in Beijing, this paper characterizes not only temporal behavior patterns of share bike users: during ordinary days, holidays and the pandemic, but also spatial behavior patterns: around malls, metros, normal communities and infected communities, etc. This paper illustrates the evolution of share bikes usage during the pandemic and discover the critical time & places showing the significant impact on the productive and social activities. The association of public health interventions with improved control of the COVID-19 outbreak was extrapolated by conducting co-location analysis temporally. These findings may provide critical information on how to respond to other epidemic events.