What is the maximum possible social distance?

With official guidance due to coronavirus being a social distance of two metres, what is the maximum possible social distance on Earth? In this video I use high resolution geospatial data to find out!

As I say in the video, this calculation is definitely an approximation at parts, and I've done my best to be realistic with the errors. At the end of the day though the single biggest factors are the packing efficiency and the effect of orography - I don't doubt that some sub-grid (in my data at least) processes might produce effects of a few millimetres, and if people would like to calculate these themselves then please do so and let me know on social media. If you're interested in the effects of domestic houses then please see the pinned comment!

Notes:
(2) Note that this was retrieved on 23/3/2020, before I edited this video!
(3) Danielson, J.J., and Gesch, D.B., 2011,
Global multi-resolution terrain elevation data 2010 (GMTED2010):
(4) Note that the original dataset does actually have an even higher resolution of 15"! But for ease of computation I worked with the highest available resolution of .netcdf file, which was 225"

In this video I calculate the maximum possible social distance on Earth due to the coronavirus, accounting for elevation/orography, packing efficiency, and the world population. Ish.

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Huge thanks to my supporters on Patreon: Alastair Fortune, Andy Hartley, Anne Smith, Austin Frazee, Benjamin T. Milnes, bitreign33, Charles Bray, Chloayylmao, Chrismarie, Colin J. Brown, Dan Hanvey, Ethan Fuller, Ian Dolan-Betney, Jack Troup, Jackson Dęborkzgórzcski, James Bridges, James Munro, jawad alalasi, Joe Mickleburgh, Jon Sjöberg, KASponland, Kedar, Kendall Hendrix, Kendra Johnson, Kenneth Kusmierek, Kodzo, Lachlan Woods, Leighton Mackenzie, Liam, Mat Allen, Omar Miranda, Oskar Hellström, Princess Andromeda, Roger, Sean Richards, SexyCaveman, Simon Donkers, Tim Boxall, Wendover Productions.

[SimonClark]

After some excellent comments from my patrons (1) I wanted to address a very reasonable criticism of my methodology in the video: that of multi-story building floors being too low, considering that domestic houses are mostly two-story and so should also count.

To justify my original calculation a little bit, my approximation of the number of floors in buildings is only applicable to *really* tall buildings (likely 10+ stories) but if you argue that you can put one person on each floor of *any* building then you're missing all the smaller residential houses (plus industry and more besides). Personally I think this kind of negates the point I was making about orography in the video as you're not separated by enough vertical distance anyway! But let's run with that assumption and give accounting for domestic houses a shot. While the big multistory buildings produce a negligible effect, small domestic houses will not because there's just so many of them. I *tried* to get an estimate of how big their effect is on the maximum social distance:

According to the UN each household has 4.9 people in it on a global average (2). I couldn't find global data for how many of these households are flats versus houses of some kind, but the EU published a report saying about 50% of its citizens live in flats (3) so I'll use that number and accept that it's likely a bit low compared to the rest of the world. Assuming that the other 50% are in single-story or large multistory buildings (and so, in theory, accounted for by my existing approximation or not contributing extra floors) that would imply that there are approximately 800M domestic two-story houses in the world. Again, this is only a rough estimation but I think we're in the right ballpark. If we accept that number and assume that these houses are likely two-storied then we can remove an additional 800M people from the global population we're spreading out on the Earth's surface. In which case everyone on Earth would instead have 46, 738 sq. m to roam around in, implying a maximum social radius of 244 m!
So telling one person in each house on Earth to just go upstairs (and thus have maybe a few hundred square metres to roam around in) gives everyone else a lot more room!
Like I say though I think this kind of runs counter to the whole point of the video being maintaining as large a separation (including vertical distance) as possible. But in case you were wondering, there you go.

[davidkelm]

“Imagine that there is a 150m cliff...”
Shows picture of 1000m El Capitan

[MedlifeCrisis]

This was a wild ride. Best project I've seen yet.

[aliabdaal]

I was expecting a brilliant plug after ‘speaking of python’ :P

[themoon]

6:33 damn the oceans look pretty tall...

[gJonii]

Packing efficiency thing is forgetting something: if you place a person on coast, about half of area they take with their isolation sphere is ocean which is uncounted. So to do this properly, you'd have to calculate how many people you can fit on coasts, and calculate how much "virtual territory" you gain for your total landmass thing.

[tofight]

Cant you also include seashores, some peoples "circles" can cover water, this seems to me that it can have a reasonable impact.

[nathanieltomsett]

That one guy chilling at the top of mt everest

[MultiGreenstorm]

"Good day sir we are social distancing everybody in the world let me look you get uhhhhm ah a canoe in the middel of the oceaan good luck sir"

[waltz]

A'ight, imma be honest here. I barely ever finish a video like this, I usually just kinda zone off in all the talkin' and just move on to another. But you somehow managed to keep me *thoroughly* entertained here and actually was quite impressed at how fucking smart and good you are at just solving problems in general. Fucking kudos to you my friend.

[catfactsuk]

Well, nice to know Dr Simon Clark has found something to keep himself busy, very nice video.

[mianlehaclan]

Commenting because of the algorithm :)
And your videos make me feel smarter.
It's incredible how much effort you put in :)

[Comfy_Salmon]

I think the next person who asks you what you've been up to in isolation, might regret it :) Cracking video!

[kiverismusic]

7:50 - completely cracked me up, busted out laughing when you showed the second figure !

Fantastic video, really appreciate how thorough you were (given the data you had available) ... even if the final contribution was minimal :D

[ceryscooper]

glad to know you’re keeping busy 😂 loved this video, mad how there’s way more to consider than i original thought .. very interesting :)

[Drawoon]

You forgot about the coastlines! Using your method you'd put everyone the radius' distance away from the coastlines, but it'd be more efficient to put them on the coastlines, and we do have a lot of coastlines.

[jacobblackshaw]

Great Video Simon! keep it up, Rewatching the old vlogs is keeping me sane :p

[jonopriestley]

Keeping up with this was like keeping up with my physics lectures. I think I get it. But also you’re gonna have to take a second because I’m not that fast. Honestly though, this was a great video!

[MuddyDuck...]

Pleased to see you are keeping your grey matter exercised during the current situation.
Thanks for an interesting video, and for distracting us for ~11mins from the current lockdown...
Looking forward to your next upload, and stay safe.

[CameronGibsonIRL]

The huge nerd within me sat and watched this entire video and considered it all seriously as if it was something I needed to know for the future haha!
Great video, greats maths and great fun.