Abstract
BackgroundDisasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic pose an overwhelming demand on resources that cannot always be met by official organisations. Limited resources and human response to crises can lead members of local communities to turn to one another to fulfil immediate needs. This spontaneous citizen-led response can be crucial to a community’s ability to cope in a crisis. It is thus essential to understand the scope of such initiatives so that support can be provided where it is most needed. Nevertheless, quickly developing situations and varying definitions can make the community response challenging to measure.AimTo create an accessible interactive map of the citizen-led community response to need during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales, UK that combines information gathered from multiple data providers to reflect different interpretations of need and support.ApproachWe gathered data from a combination of official data providers and community-generated sources to create 14 variables representative of need and support. These variables are derived by a reproducible data pipeline that enables flexible integration of new data. The interactive tool is available online (www.covidresponsemap.wales) and can map available data at two geographic resolutions. Users choose their variables of interest, and interpretation of the map is aided by a linked bee-swarm plot.DiscussionThe novel approach we developed enables people at all levels of community response to explore and analyse the distribution of need and support across Wales. While there can be limitations to the accuracy of community-generated data, we demonstrate that they can be effectively used alongside traditional data sources to maximise the understanding of community action. This adds to our overall aim to measure community response and resilience, as well as to make complex population health data accessible to a range of audiences. Future developments include the integration of other factors such as well-being.
Highlights
Background Disasters such as the COVID19 pandemic pose an overwhelming demand on resources that cannot always be met by official organisations
The aims of the COVID-19 Response Map project are twofold: (I) collate data that represents the scale of unmet need during the pandemic across geographic areas; and (II) create a bespoke data platform that would facilitate the exploration of this complex population health data
The majority of data sources we have presented are available at a Local Authority District resolution, which in Wales corresponds to only 22 areas [48]
Summary
In response to the need for an understanding of how the citizen-led response to the COVID-19 pandemic was meeting the needs of local communities we have developed the COVID-19 Response Map project: an online interactive map, available in English (www.covidresponsemap.wales) and Welsh, (www.mapymatebcovid.cymru), that measures local levels of need and community action with a novel combination. The map uses a bespoke visualisation design that allows users to explore any combination of variables of interest to them, and makes it possible for non-specialists to derive meaningful insights from complex population data This means that important information about local wellbeing and needs is available to everyone involved in disaster response, from community and third sector organisers to the government. We are continuing to work with local and national organisations to further adapt it to their requirements This community support tool was developed in collaboration with the Welsh Government, local councils, voluntary groups and the public sector.
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