This summer, I have been interning for Dr. Yulin Hswen at the Innovation and Digital Health Accelerator at Boston Children's Hospital, working to write a paper on using community risk perception toward COVID-19 to project domestic air travel volume in South Korea. I have been examining relative search volume data from NAVER, the predominant Korean search engine, to circumvent the resource and time-lag constraints that are associated with using survey methods to gauge public sentiment. This project is particularly important in today's world as nations start pulling back travel restrictions and social distancing rules, as projecting for future increases in public mobility will allow for governments to preemptively allocate resources necessary testing and contact tracing.
