Urban resilience in face of the pandemic: Tracing changes in public events before, amid and after the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong

Urban resilience studies often prioritize the investigation of sudden and short-lived natural disasters, while overlooking the gradual emergence and enduring nature of pandemics. The COVID-19 crisis, a quintessential example of such a challenge, has elicited significant but underexplored shifts in the landscape of urban public events. This research, drawing on social sensing geospatial datasets, aims to examine the changes in public events prior to, during, and after the fifth wave of COVID-19 in Hong Kong. Employing a dynamic time warping-based clustering algorithm alongside multiple linear regression analysis, we endeavor to address two pivotal questions: (1) How have the patterns of public events transformed in response to the pandemic? (2) What factors significantly influence these changes? The findings reveal that: Temporally, the implementation of social distancing measures is correlated with a marked reduction in public event frequency, reflecting the extensive impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Spatial analysis reveals that while public events are concentrated in Hong Kong's central areas, the spread of confirmed COVID-19 cases is more evenly distributed, with only a weak correlation observed between event hotspots and case distributions. Furthermore, our analysis identifies three distinct temporal patterns of public event changes, underscoring a higher resilience of events in urban centers against pandemicinduced disruptions. Additionally, built environment factors are found to be positively correlated with the decline in events as per the impact ratio, while socio-demographic factors more significantly affect the recovery ratio of events post-pandemic. This study not only pioneers in providing a comprehensive framework for monitoring urban events during a pandemic but also offers crucial insights into urban dynamics and vitality. These findings are invaluable for shaping more effective public health policies and crisis management strategies, enhancing urban resilience in face of future pandemics.