2020/10/31 by Raviraj Dave, Tushar Choudhari, Dave, Raviraj +5
Mathematics · Social Sciences · #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) #Urban Transport and Accessibility
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2011.00267
openalex publication_date 2020/10/31 · openalex created_date 2022/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Aspirations to slow down the spread of Novel Coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) resulted\nin unprecedented restrictions on personal and work-related travels in various\nnations across the globe. As a consequence, economic activities within and\nacross the countries were almost halted. As restrictions loosen and cities\nstart to resume public and private transport to revamp the economy, it becomes\ncritical to assess the commuters' travel-related risk in light of the ongoing\npandemic. We develop a generalizable quantitative framework to evaluate the\ncommute-related risk arising from inter-district and intra-district travels by\ncombining Nonparametric Data Envelopment analysis for vulnerability assessment\nwith transportation network analysis. We demonstrate the application of the\nproposed model for establishing travel corridors or travel bubbles within and\nacross Gujarat and Maharashtra, two Indian states that have reported many\nSARS-CoV2 cases since early April 2020. Our findings suggest that establishing\nthe travel bubble between a pair of districts solely based on the health\nvulnerability indices of origin-destination discards the en-route travel risks\ndue to prevalent pandemic, hence underestimating the threat. For example, while\nthe resultant of social and health vulnerabilities of Narmada and Vadodara's\ndistricts is relatively moderate, the en-route travel risk exacerbates the\noverall travel risk. Our study provides actionable insights to users into\nchoosing the alternate path with the least risk and can inform political\ndecisions to establish low-risk travel corridors within and across the states\nwhile accounting for social and health vulnerabilities in addition to\ntransit-time related risks.\n