Mind the gap: studying the impact of Covid-19 on cellular users presence in inland areas

It is widely known that there is a close relationship between the habits of people and the characteristics of the environment where such people live. Also, due to the ubiquity of mobile radio access (mobile subscriptions are expected to overcome 9 billions in 2028), the study of cellular users communication activity can reveal important insights about social, topological, and technological phenomena at large scales. The goal of grouping mobile radio access sites (e.g., eNodeBs) according to the spatial and temporal characteristics of their network activity is typically pursued through the design of clustering algorithms. A common choice is to group network sites according to the dynamics of the served traffic: this option offers several advantages to service providers, who put effort to discover regularities of traffic loads and target pro-activity in network resources management. Recently, the huge potential of mobile data has been exploited to examine the impact of Covid-19 pandemic on people’s mobility and social life. In this context, many studies in literature observe a shift in the presence of people from dense urban cities to inner areas, apparently inverting the trend of depopulation of rural areas that has been observed since decades in many countries worldwide. Using a real-world cellular network dataset, this study focuses on the effects of Covid-19 pandemic on cellular users presence in the Italian region of Valtellina, which consists of small, rural villages progressively shrinking due to a long-term depopulation phenomenon. By clustering network sites based on the changes (i.e., gaps) in the relative share of connected users after the pandemic, we observe that: i) users’ behavior in Valtellina has changed and ii) such change is spatially heterogeneous, indicating a modification in the attractiveness of urban settlements according to post-pandemic needs.