Recent years have witnessed rapid advances in location-based services (LBS) and location tracking with the
continuous evolvement of mobile devices and communication technologies. As a response to the global COVID-
19 pandemic, Location Based Services contribute to the monitoring, management and decision-making during the
different stages of flighting against the virus and post-pandemic recovery.
This Special Issue aims to provide a contemporary picture on recent research activities related to LBS and
location-based data (e.g., mobile phone data, GPS data, social media data and crowdsourced geographic
information) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We invite original research contributions on all aspects of
this context, and, particularly, encourage submissions focusing on the following themes (but not limited to):
- Location tracking and people tracing (with smartphones)
- Computational movement and activity analytics
- Analysis of location-based big data
- Privacy-preserving and ethically-aware data analysis
- LBS to support the general public’s daily mobility and activities during the COVID-19 pandemic
- Dynamic and real-time cartographic visualization and processing
- Social, legal and ethical aspects
