TRACKING COVID

Tracking COVID-19 with Big Data, GIS and Social Media

Ming-Hsiang Tsou, director of The Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA) at San Diego State University, and his team developed the hub to serve as a single source of information given the large amount of COVID-19-related data available.

The Research HUB offers six areas of collected data, including vulnerability maps and San Diego ZIP code maps. It also includes timelines about major policies and events for 16 major cities. Webinars, videos and slides which utilize national research data along with SMART dashboards that use social media and keywords to monitor real-time information are included in the Research HUB.

The HDMA group applied both data science tools (visual analytics) and data visualization methods (maps) to enable the dashboard visualizations. The “Vulnerability Map,” created by third-year geography/GIS student Jessica Embury, visualizes and maps diabetes-related emergency department discharge information by age and location in San Diego County with data provided by HHSA. https://newscenter.sdsu.edu

OCTOPUS fends off COVID-19 in Israel’s hardest-hit city

OCTOPUS Systems, the integrated command and control platform, has announced success in mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak in Bnei Brak, Israel. The city of 220,000 people was the hardest-hit coronavirus hotspot in Israel, with 2,100 infections. To combat the virus and flatten the curve, Bnei Brak employed a joint task force made up of various government branches, calling on OCTOPUS to consolidate their security systems and databases.

Bnei Brak’s population density is three times that of Manhattan’s, and its residents don’t use radio, television, or internet. In other parts of Israel, using cellular data was essential to battling the spread of COVID-19. In this town, there was no such option. OCTOPUS’ command and control system is a platform for orchestrating many different systems, ranging from cybersecurity and physical security to fraud protection and more. It integrates all these systems and databases seamlessly and consolidates them into one brain. This enables better integration and cross-referencing, allowing users to make well-informed decisions when managing a crisis.

OCTOPUS integrated 500 cameras throughout the city, as well as drones and observation balloons, and provided the task force with analytics from various data sources, such as City CRM, GIS, and multiple government databases. The platform created a centralized management system for hundreds of responders, 16,500 cases of food delivery each day, and 1,600 coordinated missions a day. It also tracked the health status of confirmed and unconfirmed cases of COVID-19, security personnel, and frontline workers via a customized mobile app.

NASA funds four research projects on COVID-19 impacts

NASA’s Earth Science Division is supporting the science community as it investigates the many changes this unique situation has brought to light. Through its Rapid Response and Novel Research in Earth Science (RRNES) initiative, the agency is providing funding for selected, rapid-turnaround projects that make innovative use of satellite data and other NASA resources to address the different environmental, economic and societal impacts of the pandemic. NASA announced last month the first RRNES projects and is continuing to evaluate new project proposals.

The agency recently funded the following four RRNES projects:

– Exploring uneven gains in urban air quality

– Impact of air pollution reduction on the atmosphere

– Air pollution links to water quality

– Shedding (night) light on pandemic economic impacts

https://www.nasa.gov

Vodafone UK launches IoT heat sensor to help coronavirus fight

The camera has been developed in partnership with Digital Barriers, can apparently screen the body temperature of 100 people per minute and claims to be accurate to within around half a degree Celsius. One of the main symptoms of coronavirus infection is an increased body temperature, so this sort of technology is being seriously considered as a relatively efficient way of screening large numbers of people. https://telecoms.com/504095/vodafone-uk-launches-iot-heat-sensing-tech-to-help-with-coronavirus-fight/

Disaster Tech & Kinetica launches crisis management platform

Kinetica and Disaster Tech announced the release of the COVID-19 Real-time Crisis Management Platform to aggregate and track data relevant to COVID-19 emergency response. The platform is able to combine current data, such as hospital capacity and diversion status, locations of alternative medical sites, state-wide declarations, testing kit quantities, and protective equipment availability at a local level, for example. The platform functionality is the direct result of a survey of emergency managers and emergency responders across disciplines, and blends data from 30 different government, public health, and private sector sources.

Disaster Tech is a public benefit corporation that builds technology to analyze, visualize, and communicate risk, on a mission to accelerate decision-making to save lives, protect the environment, and reduce risk to communities and critical infrastructure. It is making the COVID-19 Real-Time Crisis Management Platform available as a public service to ensure public health and emergency management agencies have access immediately..
https://www.disastertech.com/

India’s Aarogya Setu app is now open source

The Government of India has made the android version of Aarogya setu app open source. The app designed for tracking COVID-19 cases was facing several questions regarding users privacy and security. Making it open source will allow developers to inspect the source code of the app and modify for changes. The source code of the Android version is already available for review and collaboration. Developers and researchers can visit https://github.com/nic-delhi/AarogyaSetu_Android.git link to participate. The app uses Bluetooth and location data to function. It has advised more than 900,000 users to quarantine themselves or get tested for the disease and almost 24% of them have confirmed to be positive with COVID-19, the ministry said. Apart from this, the government has also announced offer cash prizes of up to $1,325 to security experts for identifying and reporting bugs and vulnerabilities.
https://www.financialexpress.com/

India launches online dashboard for monitoring movement of migrant workers

India has launched an online dashboard to monitor and facilitate the smooth movement of migrant workers and their contact-tracing during lockdown across the country.

To collect information and facilitate movement of migrants, the National Disaster Management Authority has developed the online dashboard — National Migrant Information System (NMIS) — on the existing NDMA-GIS portal. The portal will maintain a central repository and help the sending as well as receiving state and district to ask for and give their acceptance in an online format seamlessly.

The states can upload individual data on the portal. As many states have already collected migrant data, this can be integrated through Application Programming Interface (API).
The key data pertaining to the persons migrating has been standardised for uploading such as name, age, mobile no, originating and destination district, date of travel etc, which states are already collecting. The NMIS Dashboard is a geo-spatial platform as a decision-support system for current pandemic situation.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/centre-launches-online-dashboard-for-monitoring-movement-of-migrant-workers-1678832-2020-05-17

Transerve Technologies to map spread of Covid-19

‘Transerve Technologies’ through its offering ‘Transerve Online Stack (TOS)’ has come up with a solution to map Covid19 density zones using geospatial technology. This advanced solution works on Predictive Analysis and uses layers of geospatial data to track, monitor, analyze and visually represent them into data stacks. These data stacks will help in route optimization in Covid positive zones that can further assist businesses in making statistically driven decisions.

Supply chain professionals across organizations and logistic companies are planning to extensively use geo spatial data for the route optimization of their vehicles by avoiding the red zones. Moreover, analyzing data of existing health infrastructure and census data sets and mapping it to those infected can help policymakers and concerned authorities in identifying COVID19 containment zones. Similarly, such analysis can also estimate the load on each corona testing center and help health officials to set up more labs or increase or decrease the capacity of existing ones depending on population density and distance to the testing laboratory. https://online.transerve.com

Chennai defence lab develops ‘Kavasam’ app

The Chennai-based Combat Vehicles Research and Development Establishment (CVRDE) has developed an app called ‘Kavasam’ to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is meant to ease the work of frontline workers, enable street-level surveillance and aid quicker decision-making by those in charge.The app facilitates geofencing of homes of those under quarantine to monitor their movement. An automatic notification will be sent to the super admin, epicentre head and team leader/police if the person moves 100m away from the location.
https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/chennai/2020/may/05/chennai-defence-lab-develops-kavasam-app-to-help-covid-19-warriors-fight-virus-2139504.html