Long-Term Effects of COVID-19, and Its Impact on Business, Employees, and CO2 Emissions, a Study Using Arc-GIS Survey 123 and Arc-GIS Mapping

Abstract

Further investigation is needed to study the impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent lifestyle changes. The global pandemic caused a high degree of uncertainty, leading to extreme anxiety. These feelings were also compounded by the sudden changes in lifestyle at home, within families, work, studies, and recreation. With the end of the lockdown approaching in most regions of the world, many of these lifestyle changes, including work-from-home, might remain for a good percentage of the workforce. The primary objective of this research is to explore employees’ work-from-home model and its impact on commute time, job satisfaction, and carbon footprint. Quantitative variables include data from North America and Global country-specific carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and quantitative data, including employee satisfaction, commute time, miles traveled, and more, was collected using ArcGIS Survey123. This research focus on CO2 emissions data, comparing 2019 data (March to May) as a baseline to 2020, 2021, and 2022 (March to May) as the target year. The hypothesis is that the work-from-home order had a significant impact on short-term CO2 reductions and could have potential long-term impacts due to many corporations’ adoption of the “work-from-home” model. The data collected regarding CO2 were analyzed using ArcGIS Pro and Geostatistical Interpolation. This study also explored the potential impacts of this adoption on employee job satisfaction and CO2 emissions reductions based on surveyed employees. Another objective of this research is to look at the relationship between the COVID-19 lockdown with the work-from-home model and the reduction in air emissions, namely CO2.