A new app has found a way to track our social distancing efforts using map data. Social distancing can at times feel like an intangible action, since it, in practice, means doing nothing. People struggle with the idea that the best thing they can do to push back against the global coronavirus pandemic is to simply stay home.

Medical professionals the world over have vehemently pushed for people to practice social distancing to "flatten the curve" of the pandemic. The reasoning behind it is clear, and something like 80% of Earth's human population has obliged. The problem is that it's difficult to track the metrics of staying home. Countries that have battled the COVID-19 virus since its infancy report success with social distancing but there's no easy way of measuring infection rates in a way that compares them to the number of people self-isolating in a given area. It's not like people are checking in on some application to register as being at home.

Related: Has Coronavirus Now Proved the Internet Really Is a Basic Necessity?

This is where Unacast steps in. It's an analytics firm with a new web app that relies on location data and map data to fulfill its stated goal to "describe human mobility in an infinite number of ways". The company's original purpose was to use its robust tracking and analytics to assist businesses in monitoring foot traffic, helping those businesses come up with better marketing systems. Now, however, a new post on the Unacast website explains how they're leveraging their expertise to help with the pandemic.

How Unacast Monitors Social Distancing (and You Can Too)

Unacast Scoreboard

Unacast's newest venture is the Social Distancing Scoreboard, a web application that allows users to check how a specific area is handling social distancing. It's publicly available, obsessively updated, and takes only seconds to use. Opening the page on any web browser prompts the user to enter a city or county name. From there, the app gives social distancing grades based on Unacast's tracking data. Users can see an up-to-date number of a county's reported coronavirus cases, how the residents of the county's average mobility has changed since the social distancing guidelines were implemented, and how much social distancing has decreased the area's non-essential travel.

The basic idea is by checking people's average distance traveled, it's easier to get a picture of how much their lives are impacted by social distancing. If the majority of people in a county are traveling less often, there's a good chance that county is purposefully observing the guidelines, resulting in a better grade on the app. Unacast's methodology is already being justified, as it reports noticing a county's letter grade will improve if its number of confirmed cases increases.

All of this tracking is sure to raise people's privacy alarms and for good reason. Unacast primarily obtains location data via code it runs in apps people install on their phones. The privacy policy of any app using Unacast's SDK will mention the developer's partnership with the company, and the Unacast website does offer an easy way to opt-out. The company lists a group of partners with which it shares data and also mentions any personally identifying information is absent from those disclosures (which may explain why the list only includes about 8 companies). It's not a perfect privacy situation, but considering how potentially valuable its Social Distancing Scoreboard and related data could be to the fight against COVID-19, and the fact that all of this information is available to health organizations and medical scientists studying the virus, Unacast may sit close to the center of the "Big Data vs. Public Service" Venn diagram than most data companies.

Next: Coronavirus Is Exposing How Much Phone Tracking Already Exists

Source: Unacast