Linking power consumption to Covid-19 response in Singapore

Measuring how people’s daily behaviours change during a public health emergency is key to evaluating and adapting public health measures. In the external page first study of its kind, FRS researchers Dr Gururaghav Raman and Prof. Jimmy Chih-Hsien Peng examined individual residential electricity consumption as an indicator of a community’s response to unprecedented and disruptive events, such as a pandemic.

Previous studies have used surveys, mobile phone data and city-level power consumption as possible indicators of behavioural response. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, FRS assess how residents in the city-state responded to publicly available information during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore. Specifically, the study “Electricity consumption of Singaporean households reveals proactive community response to COVID-19 progression” is based on electricity consumption data of over 10,200 households in Singapore from November 2019 to May 2020.

The researchers found strong positive correlation between the progression of the pandemic in Singapore and peak aggregate electricity consumption of residential households. Further analysis showed that the increase in electricity demand was directly influenced by publicly available information on daily new Covid-19 cases in the period before the ‘Circuit Breaker’ lockdown. However, this influence reduced after the lockdown was enacted, suggesting residents had settled into their new lifestyles.

The study suggests that residents in Singapore across all demographics reacted proactively by increasingly staying at home, despite there being no government-mandated restrictions. This could mean that the authorities were effective in persuading the residents about the severity of the disease and the need to effect immediate behavioural changes to tackle it.

The analysis of residential electricity consumption can allow policymakers to assess the proclivity of the populace towards embracing risk-reduction behaviours, estimate their speed of response to governmental interventions, and design effective public health updates. Moreover, the analysis of electricity consumption data combined with location information can also help policymakers identify specific demographics that may require additional interventions.