IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i22p9385-d443418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the Effectiveness of the Measures in Supermarkets for Reducing Contact among Customers during COVID-19 Period

Author

Listed:
  • Qiancheng Xu

    (Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany)

  • Mohcine Chraibi

    (Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany)

Abstract

The spread of the COVID-19 virus had a huge impact on human life on the global scale. Many control measures devoted to decrease contact among people have been adopted to slow down the transmission of the disease. A series of measures have been taken in supermarkets, which include restricting the number of customers, keeping social distance, and entering with a shopping cart. In this work, we investigate with numerical simulations the effectiveness of these measures in reducing the contact among customers. Several scenarios with different control measures are designed for numerical analysis. The movements of customers in a supermarket are simulated by a microscopic model for pedestrian dynamics. Moreover, an index based on the distance between customers is defined to measure the degree of contact and therefore evaluate it quantitatively. The effect of these measures on the average contact degree of each customer is explored, and the spatial distribution of the contact among customers in the supermarket is shown in a qualitative way. Simulation results show that except shopping cart measure, the other two measures are effective in reducing contact among customers.

Suggested Citation

  • Qiancheng Xu & Mohcine Chraibi, 2020. "On the Effectiveness of the Measures in Supermarkets for Reducing Contact among Customers during COVID-19 Period," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(22), pages 1-14, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9385-:d:443418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9385/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9385/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Chengdai Huang & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Testing and Reopening in an SEIR Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 1-21, January.
    2. Bosina, Ernst & Weidmann, Ulrich, 2017. "Estimating pedestrian speed using aggregated literature data," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 468(C), pages 1-29.
    3. David Berger & Kyle Herkenhoff & Chengdai Huang & Simon Mongey, 2022. "Testing and Reopening in an SEIR Model," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 43, pages 1-21, January.
    4. Xu, Qiancheng & Chraibi, Mohcine & Tordeux, Antoine & Zhang, Jun, 2019. "Generalized collision-free velocity model for pedestrian dynamics," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 535(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Małgorzata Dudzińska & Marta Gwiaździńska-Goraj & Aleksandra Jezierska-Thöle, 2022. "Social Factors as Major Determinants of Rural Development Variation for Predicting Epidemic Vulnerability: A Lesson for the Future," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-24, October.
    2. Sparnaaij, Martijn & Yuan, Yufei & Daamen, Winnie & Duives, Dorine C., 2024. "Using pedestrian modelling to inform virus transmission mitigation policies: A novel activity scheduling model to enable virus transmission risk assessment in a restaurant environment," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 633(C).
    3. Cui, Hongjun & Xie, Jinping & Zhu, Minqing & Tian, Xiaoyong & Wan, Ce, 2022. "Virus transmission risk of college students in railway station during Post-COVID-19 era: Combining the social force model and the virus transmission model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 608(P1).
    4. Tomasz Antczak & Bartosz Skorupa & Mikolaj Szurlej & Rafal Weron & Jacek Zabawa, 2021. "Simulation modeling of epidemic risk in supermarkets: Investigating the impact of social distancing and checkout zone design," WORking papers in Management Science (WORMS) WORMS/21/05, Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ichino, Andrea & Favero, Carlo A. & Rustichini, Aldo, 2020. "Restarting the economy while saving lives under Covid-19," CEPR Discussion Papers 14664, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Brodeur, Abel & Clark, Andrew E. & Fleche, Sarah & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "COVID-19, lockdowns and well-being: Evidence from Google Trends," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    3. Charles A.E. Goodhart & Dimitrios P. Tsomocos & Xuan Wang, 2023. "Support for small businesses amid COVID‐19," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(358), pages 612-652, April.
    4. David Baqaee & Emmanuel Farhi, 2020. "Nonlinear Production Networks with an Application to the Covid-19 Crisis," NBER Working Papers 27281, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Graham, James & Ozbilgin, Murat, 2021. "Age, industry, and unemployment risk during a pandemic lockdown," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    6. Louis-Philippe Beland & Abel Brodeur & Taylor Wright, 2020. "COVID-19, Stay-at-Home Orders and Employment: Evidence from CPS Data," Carleton Economic Papers 20-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 19 May 2020.
    7. Houštecká, Anna & Koh, Dongya & Santaeulàlia-Llopis, Raül, 2021. "Contagion at work: Occupations, industries and human contact," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    8. Xiao Chen & Hanwei Huang & Jiandong Ju & Ruoyan Sun & Jialiang Zhang, 2022. "Endogenous cross-region human mobility and pandemics," CEP Discussion Papers dp1860, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    9. Shami, Labib & Lazebnik, Teddy, 2022. "Economic aspects of the detection of new strains in a multi-strain epidemiological–mathematical model," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 165(P2).
    10. Gopal K. Basak & Chandramauli Chakraborty & Pranab Kumar Das, 2021. "Optimal Lockdown Strategy in a Pandemic: An Exploratory Analysis for Covid-19," Papers 2109.02512, arXiv.org.
    11. Laura Alfaro & Anusha Chari & Andrew N. Greenland & Peter K. Schott, 2020. "Aggregate and Firm-Level Stock Returns During Pandemics, in Real Time," NBER Working Papers 26950, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Chen, Simiao & Jin, Zhangfeng & Bloom, David E., 2020. "Act Early to Prevent Infections and Save Lives: Causal Impact of Diagnostic Efficiency on the COVID-19 Pandemic," IZA Discussion Papers 13749, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Hortaçsu, Ali & Liu, Jiarui & Schwieg, Timothy, 2021. "Estimating the fraction of unreported infections in epidemics with a known epicenter: An application to COVID-19," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 106-129.
    14. Joshua Bernstein & Alexander W. Richter & Nathaniel A. Throckmorton, 2020. "COVID-19: A View from the Labor Market," Working Papers 2010, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    15. Daron Acemoglu & Victor Chernozhukov & Iván Werning & Michael D. Whinston, 2021. "Optimal Targeted Lockdowns in a Multigroup SIR Model," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 487-502, December.
    16. Alexander Chudik & M. Hashem Pesaran & Alessandro Rebucci, 2020. "Voluntary and Mandatory Social Distancing: Evidence on COVID-19 Exposure Rates from Chinese Provinces and Selected Countries," Globalization Institute Working Papers 382, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    17. Antonio Diez de los Rios, 2022. "A macroeconomic model of an epidemic with silent transmission and endogenous self‐isolation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(S1), pages 581-625, February.
    18. Viral V. Acharya & Zhengyang Jiang & Robert J. Richmond & Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden, 2020. "Divided We Fall: International Health and Trade Coordination During a Pandemic," NBER Working Papers 28176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Lu, Xuefei & Borgonovo, Emanuele, 2023. "Global sensitivity analysis in epidemiological modeling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(1), pages 9-24.
    20. Abel Brodeur & David Gray & Anik Islam & Suraiya Bhuiyan, 2021. "A literature review of the economics of COVID‐19," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(4), pages 1007-1044, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:22:p:9385-:d:443418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.