Seismic Silences During Pandemic Updates

Last Update: 9 June 2021

The “Monitor My Lockdown” project website and Web App are now live: www.MonitorMyLockdown.com

It is the culmination of eight months of research, analysis, and coding using seismic data to monitor COVID-19 lockdowns while pursuing high school (Grade 9).

On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since then, governments around the world, including Canada, have deployed periodic lockdowns to check the spread of the virus. Lockdown restrictions are eased when the number of new COVID-19 cases start to decrease and are tightened when the cases started to increase.

“Monitor My Lockdown” keeps policymakers, health workers, and citizens updated about the effect of COVID-19 lockdowns in reducing human movements. It does so by analyzing near-real-time seismic vibrations across Canadian cities using data from the Canadian National Seismograph Network and extracting seismic vibrations in the range 5 Hz -20 Hz. Seismic vibrations in these ranges are associated with human and cultural noises such as construction, transportation, sports and music events. Methodology

Lockdowns are difficult decisions to make. Closing of borders, nonessential travel and businesses, construction sites, restaurants, and schools come at a cost – politically, financially, and socially. “Monitor My Lockdown” provides policymakers hard data and evidence to better time and target these lockdowns. It helps bridge the gap between policymaking and data from the ground when it comes to lockdowns and yields lessons on how to handle future pandemics.

Below are the snapshots of changes in human movements for Canadian cities in comparison to the pre COVID-19 period.

Current lockdown status has been obtained from official government websites.