TORONTO —
Google is sharing its Canadian users’ location data to help politicians and public health officials in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The tech giant said in a blog post Friday that it will start releasing regular reports of its users’ movements in areas across Canada.
“In Google Maps, we use aggregated, anonymized data showing how busy certain types of places are — helping identify when a local business tends to be the most crowded,” Dr. Karen DeSalvo, chief health officer for Google Health and Jen Fitzpatrick, senior vice president for Google Geo, wrote in the blog post.
“We have heard from public health officials that this same type of aggregated, anonymized data could be helpful as they make critical decisions to combat COVID-19.”
The reports use data to chart movement trends over time in different places such as retail outlets and recreation facilities, grocery stores and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces and residences, Google said.
“This information could help officials understand changes in essential trips that can shape recommendations on business hours or inform delivery service offerings,” DeSalvo and Fitzpatrick wrote.
“Similarly, persistent visits to transportation hubs might indicate the need to add additional buses or trains in order to allow people who need to travel room to spread out for social distancing. Ultimately, understanding not only whether people are traveling, but also trends in destinations, can help officials design guidance to protect public health and essential needs of communities.”
To protect people’s privacy, no personally identifiable information, including an individual’s location, contacts or movement, is made available at any point, the company said.
“These reports have been developed to be helpful while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and policies,” DeSalvo and Fitzpatrick wrote.
“For these reports, we use differential privacy, which adds artificial noise to our datasets enabling high quality results without identifying any individual person.”
Google will make the reports available in 131 countries and in Canada will offer both provincial and national breakdowns.
The California-based company said it hopes its community mobility reports provide” insights into what has changed in response to work from home, shelter in place and other policies aimed at flattening the curve of this pandemic.”
The reports will not show the number of individual visits, but instead will display a percentage increase or decrease.
“We’ll show trends over several weeks, with the most recent information representing 48-to-72 hours prior,” the blog said.
Google can only use data from users who have location history turned on in their account settings. Location history can be turned off at any time and location history data can also be deleted.
“These are unprecedented times and we will continue to evaluate these reports as we get feedback from public health officials, civil society groups, local governments and the community at large,” said the blog. “We hope these insights will add to other public health information that will help people and communities stay healthy and safe.”
