We examined the effect of social distancing on changes in visits to urban hotspot points of interest. In a pandemic situation, urban hotspots could be potential superspreader areas as visits to urban hotspots can increase the risk of contact and transmission of a disease among a population. We mapped census-block-group to point-of-interest (POI) movement networks in 16 cities in the United States. We adopted a modified coarse-grain approach to examine patterns of visits to POIs among hotspots and non-hotspots from January to May 2020. Also, we conducted chi-square tests to identify POIs with significant flux-in changes during the analysis period. The results showed disparate patterns across cities in terms of reduction in hotspot POI visitors. Sixteen cities were divided into two categories using a time series clustering method. In one category, which includes the cities of San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago, we observed a considerable decrease in hotspot POI visitors, while in another category, including the cities of Austin, Houston and San Diego, the visitors to hotspots did not greatly decrease. While all the cities exhibited overall decreased visitors to POIs, one category maintained the proportion of visitors to hotspot POIs. The proportion of visitors to some POIs (e.g. restaurants) remained stable during the social distancing period, while some POIs had an increased proportion of visitors (e.g. grocery stores). We also identified POIs with significant flux-in changes, indicating that related businesses were greatly affected by social distancing. The study was limited to 16 metropolitan cities in the United States. The proposed methodology could be applied to digital trace data in other cities and countries to study the patterns of movements to POIs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

我们研究了社交距离对访问城市热点兴趣点变化的影响。在大流行情况下，城市热点地区可能是潜在的超级传播地区，因为对城市热点地区的访问会增加人群中疾病接触和传播的风险。我们在美国16个城市中将人口普查阻止组映射到兴趣点（POI）移动网络。我们采用了一种改进的粗粒度方法，以研究2020年1月至2020年5月热点和非热点之间的POI访问模式。此外，我们进行了卡方检验，以确定在分析期间通量变化显着的POI。结果显示，就热点POI访客的减少而言，各城市的模式截然不同。使用时间序列聚类方法将16个城市分为两类。在一个类别中 其中包括旧金山，西雅图和芝加哥等城市，我们发现热点POI访客显着减少，而在包括奥斯汀，休斯顿和圣地亚哥等城市的另一类别中，热点访客却没有大幅减少。虽然所有城市的POI访客总体减少，但其中一个类别保持了热点POI访客的比例。在社会疏远时期，某些POI（例如餐厅）的访客比例保持稳定，而某些POI的访客（例如杂货店）的比例有所增加。我们还确定了POI具有显着的通量变化，表明相关业务受社会距离的影响很大。该研究仅限于美国的16个大城市。