Abstract
Responding to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, several organizations and private citizens considered the opportunity to design and publish online explanatory data visualization tools for the communication of disease data supported by a spatial dimension. They responded to the need of receiving instant information arising from the broad research community, the public health authorities, and the general public. In addition, the growing maturity of information and mapping technologies, as well as of social networks, has greatly supported the diffusion of web-based dashboards and infographics, blending geographical, graphical, and statistical representation approaches. We propose a broad conceptualization of Web visualization tools for geo-spatial information, exceptionally employed to communicate the current pandemic; to this end, we study a significant number of publicly available platforms that track, visualize, and communicate indicators related to COVID-19. Our methodology is based on (i) a preliminary systematization of actors, data types, providers, and visualization tools, and on (ii) the creation of a rich collection of relevant sites clustered according to significant parameters. Ultimately, the contribution of this work includes a critical analysis of collected evidence and an extensive modeling effort of Geo-Online Exploratory Data Visualization (Geo-OEDV) tools, synthesized in terms of an Entity-Relationship schema. The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has offered a significant case to study how and how much modern public communication needs spatially related data and effective implementation of tools whose inspection can impact decision-making at different levels. Our resulting model will allow several stakeholders (general users, policy-makers, and researchers/analysts) to gain awareness on the assets of structured online communication and resource owners to direct future development of these important tools.
Highlights
By addressing public institutions—from a global to a local scale—the World HealthOrganization (WHO) Guidelines [1] acknowledge that communication expertise has become essential to outbreak control, as much as epidemiological training and laboratory analysis practices
With the aim to inform the model design discussed in the results, COVID-19 GeoOEDV methodologies were investigated through the creation of a collection of 121 relevant websites; Table A1 reports the pages on COVID-19 holding significant data on the spatiality of the phenomena
While the majority of observed Geo-OEDV focuses on reporting infected cases, we found a set of platforms with a focus on viral sequences, i.e., data describing the genomic characteristics of viral samples extracted through COVID-19 tests and sequenced in genetic laboratories throughout the world
Summary
By addressing public institutions—from a global to a local scale—the World HealthOrganization (WHO) Guidelines [1] acknowledge that communication expertise has become essential to outbreak control, as much as epidemiological training and laboratory analysis practices. Failing in communication might significantly increase the possibility to delay the outbreak control, undermining public trust and compliance, leading to unnecessarily prolonged economic, social, and political turmoil. Communication that takes place through visualization tools responds to multiple perspectives: first, it answers the need for instant information from the whole research community and the public health (and other) authorities, in order to understand, monitor, and plan actions and policies. It addresses the general public by implementing the principle of transparency and targeting the sense of curiosity and socialization of emotions. As in the general case of risk management, geographical visualization addresses the risk communication principles, because it can strengthen the population’s risk awareness and can motivate precautionary actions
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