STUDY ON CHANGES IN COASTAL UTILIZATION DURING COVID-19 CRISIS USING AI

Abstract

 Since March 2020, a new type of coronavirus (Covid-19) has spread all over the world, and it is effective to avoid crowding of people as one method of preventing the spread of infection. On the other hand, in the summer of 2020, about 40% of the beaches were closed nationwide, but many users visited in some areas. In the absence of the convergence of Covid-19 infection, appropriate infection prevention measures will be required in the summer of 2021 as well. A situation of beach usage in 2020 will help examine infection prevention measures, and it is effective to provide quantitative information for risk management by users themselves. In this study, we investigated it including a human density using AI from images taken by fixed cameras at a beach and compared the coastal usage in the summer of 2019 with that of 2020, which was under the Covid-19 crisis. As a result, there were many users on weekdays in 2020, and the peak time zone of the number of users was shifted from 13:00 to 14:00 during the day, so it was considered that the usage situation avoided the concentration of people. However, the crowds of people within 2 m were high on Sundays and around peak hours.