Global COVID-19 Viewer: Population Estimates by Age Group and Sex
Creators: name: Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
Publisher: name: GEO Knowledge Hub
Year: 2022
Subjects: Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements
COVID-19
Global
Grid
Population

description: The SEDAC Global COVID-19 Viewer allows users to visualize spatially-explicit trends in COVID-19 infection and mortality rates. This information is presented alongside population-level risk factors such as: sex makeup, age distribution, degree of urbanization, as well as location-specific risk factors such as population density, elevation, and air quality metrics. This web app draws on layers from: SEDAC, John Hopkins University & Medicine's Coronavirus Resource Center, Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and NASA's Land, Atmosphere Near real-time Capability for EOS (LANCE).
Population count data for 2020 can be visualized as a layer in the COVID-19 Viewer. These population estimates are obtained using SEDAC's Population Estimate Service, which is an Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) compliant Web Processing Service (WPS).
Use Cases
1. You are a parent interested in the local community spread in your child's school district and surrounding areas. You load the COVID 7-day-moving average layers for confirmed cases, at the highest resolution for which data is available to review;
2. You are a community leader who needs up-to-date data on local infection trends, disease transmissibility, and the at-risk populations in your community.  You draw a polygon around your community to view population statistics and demographic information related to COVID-19 risk. You select your local administrative area in order to review the pop-up graphs for the highest resolution COVID-19 transmission data available;
3. You are an environmental and health researcher trying to understand the link between poor or worsening air quality and COVID-19 mortality rates, motivated by news of devastating wildfires across the western United States.  You use the NASA Aerosol Optical Depth to understand the extent of wildfire smoke in the region and draw a circle to estimate the populations and demographics most affected. You use COVID-19 trend data and case mortality data to gauge the impact of increased particulate matter concentrations on disease transmission and outcomes;
4. You are an urban planning researcher trying to understand the public health risks posed by differing degrees of urban density. You draw on the mapper's global coverage on the coronavirus' differential impact, and look for the urbanization levels associated with increased mortality and transmission rates.
5. You are a community-member trying to understand your personal risk, as well as the risk that your activity poses to others. You use the SEDAC COVID-19 Viewer to get a better understanding of disease-spread, demographic makeup, and aggravating risk factors associated with your community;
6. You are a health professional giving contextually-informed advice to patients on which COVID-19 precautions to take and which activities can be considered low-risk. You locate your patient's community on the mapper, and review the layer on COVID-19 prevalence as well as those on aggravating risk factors and mortality. You then click on the local administrative unit that includes this community, in order to review the pop-up for data and graphs on local COVID-19 transmission and trends.
Related materials
This resource is associated with the Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements. If you want to learn more about it, please, check the EO Toolkit portal (https://eotoolkit.unhabitat.org/), a place where you will find use cases, learning material, and many other tools and resources related to the Sustainable Development Goal 11 and New Urban Agenda.