The Globe and Mail Christina Varga Published January 12, 2021
JENNIFER GAUTHIER/Reuters
When Naz Ali was sitting at home in March, under lockdown along with the rest of Vancouver, she had the idea of using her specialized skills to track data on people’s movements owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ms. Ali is a geographic information systems (GIS) manager, location intelligence, for commercial real estate services company CBRE Canada. Her work tracking traffic – as well as other data such as demographics – helps developers, retailers and other clients determine the best locations for their investments.
She created a heat map comparing foot traffic in the downtowns of three of Canada’s largest cities before and after the lockdown. A stark picture emerged from her analysis of the data, using third-party mobile-device tracking data from Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, Robson Street in Vancouver and Sainte-Catherine Street in Montreal between January 1 and May 31, 2020.