Geospatial data and tools for analyzing COVID-19
By: Matt Forrest
Tags: Data Science, Covid 19, Mapping, Geospatial, Data Visualization

Geospatial data and tools for analyzing COVID-19

There is little need to state the monumental and life-changing effects that COVID-19 has had on lives around the globe. As the world changes around us daily, there has been an increased focus on geography.

The Wired article “Amid a Pandemic, Geography Returns With a Vengeance” highlights the fact that we have a renewed focus on our relationship with geography.

The pandemic is redefining our relationship with space. Not outer space, but physical space. Hot spots, distance, spread, scale, proximity. In a word: geography. Suddenly, we can’t stop thinking about where.

This plays out not only in how we think about our day to day relationship with physical space but also in our relationship with data and information. In almost every news publication you can find maps and data that are tied to location, with information being added and updated many times a day.

Total cases of COVID-19 from the New York Times (as of 4/15/2020)

While a crisis of this scale is unprecedented in many ways, for those who work with geospatial data, many will be familiar with the concept of crisis mapping — or using geospatial tools, data, and the power of numbers to collect data and information that can be used by those responding to a crisis.

One of the first examples of this is the response to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. There was limited reliable geospatial data, such as roads and facilities, in Haiti that could be used to tell those on the ground where to go. In the days following the earthquake, many individuals contributed to OpenStreetMap, an open project similar to Wikipedia where users can add geospatial data to the map.

The response was overwhelming. These posts from the World Bank and OpenStreetMap blog and wiki describe the response, but this video illustrates the amount of data that was added after the earthquake.

Data added to OpenStreetMap in January 2010

In the time since many different disasters have taken place that have used of geospatial data and tools. From floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, epidemics, humanitarian crises, tornados, and more have all made use of geospatial data in the response to these disasters.

COVID-19 is a crisis at a much larger scale, but there has been an overwhelming response to the crisis from the geospatial community around providing data, tools, and ways to get involved. The rest of this post will aim to share some of those initiatives.

If there is a resource that you know of that isn’t on the list feel free to add it to the responses!

Disclaimer: My expertise is in geospatial data and analysis, not in epidemiology or spatial epidemiology. This guide is simply a collection of resources that the geospatial community has made available.

Data

COVID-19 Data Repository from Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE)

JHU CSSE Dashboard

This dataset is being used by many different agencies and news organizations around the globe and is one of the most commonly cited data sources during the epidemic.

Google Cloud has also made the JHU dataset available on the Google Cloud Platform and is working with a number of organizations on the response.

Unacast

Unacast Social Distancing Scorecard

Unacast, a human mobility data and insights company, has built a social distancing scorecard that uses mobility data to analyze the changes in mobility patterns down to the county level. Thomas Walle, their CEO, posted on LinkedIn that:

If you are looking to use location data for research and public health purposes please contact us and we will give you access to our global data set for free. We believe our data has great powers — and with great powers comes a great responsibility.

Centers for Disease Control

SVI Data at the US County Level

Social vulnerability can also have a major impact on how individuals and communities can be impacted by the disease. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) publishes its Social Vulnerability Index, defined as:

Social vulnerability refers to the resilience of communities when confronted by external stresses on human health, stresses such as natural or human-caused disasters, or disease outbreaks. Reducing social vulnerability can decrease both human suffering and economic loss. CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index uses 15 U.S. census variables at tract level to help local officials identify communities that may need support in preparing for hazards; or recovering from disaster.

You can download the data as shapefiles at the county or US Census Tract level.

WeatherSource

Weather and climatology can play an impact in terms of how COVID-19 may progress, but also human behavior in terms of responding to social distancing orders. WeatherSource is a data provider that has a wide range of weather-related datasets including forecasts and climatology and has opened its API to those studying COVID-19.

Facebook

Distribution of people over the age of 60 in Mexico.

Via their Data for Good program, Facebook is working with different researchers and networks to provide a wide range of anonymized data such as high-density population maps, social connectivity, co-location maps, mobility data, and more. Some resources are publicly available, such as the population density maps, while others are reserved for specific organizations.

OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap in New York City

OpenStreetMap provides its global dataset in a downloadable file and different geographically smaller extracts via a project called Planet.osm. This contains all the data that you see on the map: roads, buildings, transportation, points of interest, hospitals, land, water, etc. You can also use Overpass Turbo which is a user interface to extract data that is queried from OSM via the Overpass API. Keep in mind that OSM data is user-generated and may not be complete in some areas.

New York Times

The New York Times is making the data behind their United States Maps available at the national, state, and county levels on GitHub.

COVID-19 Mobility Data Network

The COVID-19 Mobility Network is described as a:

…a network of infectious disease epidemiologists at universities around the world working with technology companies to use aggregated mobility data to support the COVID-19 response. Our goal is to provide daily updates to decision-makers at the state and local levels on how well social distancing interventions are working, using anonymized, aggregated data sets from mobile devices, along with analytic support for interpretation.

There is an email to contact them, but you may need to be a part of an academic institution to use this data.

United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Humanitarian Data Exchange

UN OCHA COVID-19 Data Page

The UN OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange has many different datasets for use for (and outside of ) COVID-19 including some of the datasets mentioned above along with data around mobility patterns in Italy, testing data, and other-country specific data.

Tools

CARTO

CARTO is a spatial platform that provides a wide range of tools to store, analyze, and visualize spatial data and they are making their platform available to public and private organizations:

For that reason, CARTO will be making its platform available to public and private sector organizations fighting against the coronavirus outbreak via our grants program. Whether you are a media outlet sharing advice for the general public, a healthcare organization optimizing resource allocation or a government entity looking to assess the impact of lockdowns — we want to help you with your use case and ensure we are making data-driven decisions together throughout this outbreak.

The program has been used by a long list of organizations including a collaboration between ForceManager and mendesaltaren, with additional support from Telefónica, Ferrovial, Google, and Santander to develop AsistenciaCOVID-19, a self-diagnosis and COVID-19 information app.

ESRI

ESRI is a geospatial software and platform provider that has a wide range of tools and products for geospatial analysis to many different private and public organizations around the world. From their COVID-19 resource page:

As the situation surrounding the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) continues to evolve, Esri is supporting our users and the community at large with location intelligence, geographic information system (GIS) and mapping software, services, and materials that people are using to help monitor, manage, and communicate the impact of the outbreak. Use and share these resources to help your community or organization respond effectively.

From here you can request GIS help, access GIS resources, view maps and dashboards, and get COVID-19 related insights.

QGIS

QGIS is a free and open-source desktop GIS tool that allows you to work with geospatial data, create maps, perform geospatial operations, connect to external tools, and integrate with a very extensive plugin ecosystem.

Dashboards

Google Mobility Reports

Sample Google Mobility Report

Google is using mobility data it collects on its platforms to create and publish mobility reports that capture changes in mobility patterns in several different place categories such as Retail & recreation, Parks, Grocery & pharmacy, etc.

Community Mobility Reports aim to provide insights into what has changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports chart movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.

Domo

Domo COVID-19 Geospatial Dashboard

BI company Domo has created a complete set of dashboards, both geospatial and non-geospatial, using the John Hopkins COVID-19 data that includes topics such as a daily update, maps, testing, economics, projections, and more.

Tableau

Tableau has shared a gallery of different dashboards published using Tableau as well as a starter workbook using the John Hopkins COVID-19 data.

Cuebiq

Cuebiq, a human mobility data provider, has published a series of interactive visualizations and analyses using their data on a wide range of topics including several articles by the New York Times, analyzing mobility patterns in Italy, and more.

StreetLightData

StreetLightData uses mobility data to analyze traffic patterns on roads to understand car traffic counts, transportation analytics, and more. Using their data combined with Cuebiq data to analyze how vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are changing in the US on a daily basis. You can use the map and download the data as well.

Getting Involved

HOT OSM

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) is a great place to get involved even with a few spare minutes. HOT OSM is a tasking system where different organizations can request assistance with collecting data about different areas or communities impacted by a major disaster, similar to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake described earlier.

The Tasking Manager is a mapping tool designed and built for the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s collaborative mapping process in OpenStreetMap. The purpose of the tool is to divide up a mapping project into smaller tasks that can be completed rapidly with many people working on the same overall area. It shows which areas need to be mapped and which areas need the mapping validated. This approach allows the distribution of tasks to many individual mappers in the context of emergency or other humanitarian mapping scenario. It also allows monitoring of the overall project progress and helps improve the consistency of the mapping (e.g., elements to cover, specific tags to use, etc.).

There are many different open tasks related to COVID-19 in communities around the globe. You simply need to create an account on OpenStreetMap, then choose the project you want to work on. From there you will simply be tracing a satellite image to find different features requested by the project.

Other Resources

NAPSG Foundation

The National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) is collecting a wide range of resources related to COVID-19 on their website including maps, dashboards, data, resources, and more.

OGC

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is collecting many geospatial resources including base maps, data and data pipelines, resources, dashboards, and advice around visualizing data and cartographic best practices.

Note from the editors: Towards Data Science is a Medium publication primarily based on the study of data science and machine learning. We are not health professionals or epidemiologists, and the opinions of this article should not be interpreted as professional advice. To learn more about the coronavirus pandemic, you can click here.