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Addressing the Challenges of COVID-19 Social Distancing Through Passive Wi-Fi and Ubiquitous Analytics: A Real World Deployment

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Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021 (INTERACT 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12933))

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Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing measures were employed to contain its spread. This paper describes the deployment and testing of a passive Wi-Fi scanning system to help people keep track of crowded spaces, hence comply with social distancing measures. The system is based on passive Wi-Fi sensing to detect human presence in 93 locations around a medium-sized European Touristic Island. This data is then used in website plugins and a mobile application to inform citizens and tourists about the locations’ crowdedness with real-time and historical data. To understand how people react to this type of information, we deployed online questionnaires in situ to collect user insights regarding the usefulness, safety, and privacy concerns. Results show that users considered the occupancy data reported by the system as positively related to their perception. Furthermore, the public display of this data made them feel safer while travelling and planning their commute.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Miguel Ribeiro, Nuno Nunes, Marta Ferreira, João Nogueira & Valentina Nisi

  2. ITI/LARSyS, Funchal, Portugal

    Miguel Ribeiro, Nuno Nunes, Johannes Schöning & Valentina Nisi

  3. University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Johannes Schöning

  4. University of St. Gallen, Gallen, Switzerland

    Johannes Schöning

Authors
  1. Miguel Ribeiro
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  2. Nuno Nunes
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  3. Marta Ferreira
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  4. João Nogueira
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  5. Johannes Schöning
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  6. Valentina Nisi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Miguel Ribeiro .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, Polytechnic University of Bari, Bari, Italy

    Carmelo Ardito

  2. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Rosa Lanzilotti

  3. Computer Science Department, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

    Alessio Malizia

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of York, York, UK

    Helen Petrie

  5. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Antonio Piccinno

  6. Computer Science Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Bari, Italy

    Giuseppe Desolda

  7. Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA

    Kori Inkpen

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Ribeiro, M., Nunes, N., Ferreira, M., Nogueira, J., Schöning, J., Nisi, V. (2021). Addressing the Challenges of COVID-19 Social Distancing Through Passive Wi-Fi and Ubiquitous Analytics: A Real World Deployment. In: Ardito, C., et al. Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2021. INTERACT 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12933. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85616-8_1

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