Influence of the change in the distribution of space-time population due to COVID-19 pandemic on the distribution of retail outlets

The objective of this study is to understand the spatial impact of the pandemic on various kinds of food retailers with a focus on population change. To achieve this goal, we examined the spatial similarity between the distribution of food retail outlets and that of the space-time population before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in a central area of Yokohama, Japan. The similarity was measured by using the kernel density estimation on a street network and the Kullback–Leibler divergence. The results showed that the impact of business closures varied by the type of retail outlets.