Electricity consumption of Singaporean households reveals proactive community response to COVID-19 progression.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
; 118(34)2021 08 24.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1364637
ABSTRACT
Understanding how populations' daily behaviors change during the COVID-19 pandemic is critical to evaluating and adapting public health interventions. Here, we use residential electricity-consumption data to unravel behavioral changes within peoples' homes in this period. Based on smart energy-meter data from 10,246 households in Singapore, we find strong positive correlations between the progression of the pandemic in the city-state and the residential electricity consumption. In particular, we find that the daily new COVID-19 cases constitute the most dominant influencing factor on the electricity demand in the early stages of the pandemic, before a lockdown. However, this influence wanes once the lockdown is implemented, signifying that residents have settled into their new lifestyles under lockdown. These observations point to a proactive response from Singaporean residents-who increasingly stayed in or performed more activities at home during the evenings, despite there being no government mandates-a finding that surprisingly extends across all demographics. Overall, our study enables policymakers to close the loop by utilizing residential electricity usage as a measure of community response during unprecedented and disruptive events, such as a pandemic.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Quarantine
/
Communicable Disease Control
/
Cooperative Behavior
/
Electricity
/
Electrical Equipment and Supplies
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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