On Rearranging Physical Spaces for Enhancing Social Distancing Measures to Combat the COVID-19 Infection Rates

With the COVID-19 crisis, social distancing has become a critical element of our lives. In this regard, the physical settings within the shared spaces in our cities - ranging from public transport systems to meeting rooms - require significant re-planning. This comes with tremendous challenges to the government bodies and institutions, business and transport operators and primarily to anyone who provides a service to the general public. An essential requirement of social distancing is the rearrangement or redesign of existing physical spaces in order to ensure the necessary physical distancing measures among people are in place. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of rearranging physical spaces for enhancing social distancing. We describe the essential measures that are required to achieve effective social distancing in order to minimise the rate of infection from the COVID-19 disease. We show examples through which we demonstrate how venues can be arranged for social distancing enabled meetings and functions. We examine how social distancing guidelines have unfolded in transportation systems. We explain how social distancing can be enhanced within general public areas. We discuss the shortcomings of the current ad-hoc solutions for enabling social distancing within physical spaces. We also outline a potential technological solution that can be utilised to address the challenge of enabling complex social distancing measures on physical spaces during the unfolding COVID-19 crisis and beyond.