Towards the New Normality: A Take-home Message from COVID-19 Mobility Limitations and Teleworking.

Abstract:

COVID-19 has hit us hard and by surprise. To slow down the spread of the virus, radical measures have been implemented, among them an extraordinary limitation of people’s movement – never seen to this extent at global scale. Under an imminent threat to human lives, scientific evidence, media warnings, bottom-up campaigns, and decisive political action have implemented drastic measures to radically limit mobility as a way to mitigate the expansion of Covid-19. Now – as calls to return to ‘normality’ are becoming louder around the globe (including in the severely hit Spain and Italy) – we should raise some critical thought on which kind of normality we want to return to. Here we want to reflect upon lessons learned from the Covid-19 mitigation measures in terms of reduced mobility and its effect on urban air pollution.

One of the countries hardest hit by Covid-19 was Spain, and the Spanish mobility restrictions during the lockdown were among the strictest globally. In order to understand the potential of traffic restrictions to improve urban air quality, we analyze the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) which annually reports one of the highest air pollution levels nationwide. Observed data from various air pollution monitoring stations showed that the city lockdown improve the air quality. In particular NO₂ concentrations dropped by more than 75% during the third week of the lockdown. Based on the evidence of reduced commuting during the epidemic, we define several scenarios with potential traffic emission reductions. This study demonstrate that increased teleworking could significantly improve air quality in short term leading to a 13% reduction of NO₂ concentrations.