Abstract

Many previous studies have shown that open-source technologies help democratize information and foster collaborations to enable addressing global physical and societal challenges. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus has imposed unprecedented challenges to human society. It affects every aspect of livelihood, including health, environment, transportation, and economy. Open-source technologies provide a new ray of hope to collaboratively tackle the pandemic. The role of open source is not limited to sharing a source code. Rather open-source projects can be adopted as a software development approach to encourage collaboration among researchers. Open collaboration creates a positive impact in society and helps combat the pandemic effectively. Open-source technology integrated with geospatial information allows decision-makers to make strategic and informed decisions. It also assists them in determining the type of intervention needed based on geospatial information. The novelty of this paper is to standardize the open-source workflow for spatiotemporal research. The highlights of the open-source workflow include sharing data, analytical tools, spatiotemporal applications, and results and formalizing open-source software development. The workflow includes (i) developing open-source spatiotemporal applications, (ii) opening and sharing the spatiotemporal resources, and (iii) replicating the research in a plug and play fashion. Open data, open analytical tools and source code, and publicly accessible results form the foundation for this workflow. This paper also presents a case study with the open-source spatiotemporal application development for air quality analysis in California, USA. In addition to the application development, we shared the spatiotemporal data, source code, and research findings through the GitHub repository.

Highlights

  • IntroductionDeclared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency concerning the wellbeing of the world population [1]

  • Published: December 2021On January 2020, the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO)declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency concerning the wellbeing of the world population [1]

  • We proposed and demonstrated the open-source workflow process followed in the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center for spatiotemporal research

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Summary

Introduction

Declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency concerning the wellbeing of the world population [1]. The need for COVID-19 datasets drives the demand for opening the data and technologies for fighting the pandemic. The openness of data and technologies offers cross-platform information sharing globally, and users can access the data based on their needs. Free, inclusive, and unrestricted access to data and information [2]. According to the definition of the Open Knowledge Foundation, “Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it–subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness” [4]. The two major components of knowledge are science and education [3]. Science is the art of building knowledge, and education is the process of transferring knowledge attained from scientific observations and experiments [3]

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