Project Description:
This project focuses on the development and deployment of a real-time web-based COVID-19 data hub managed by an interdisciplinary team of experts in data science, geoinformatics, epidemiology and geography. The team is collecting, analyzing, and disseminating data on the spatial and temporal dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Arctic. Both datasets and analyses of spatiotemporal trends at the subregional level will be made available to stakeholders including Arctic residents, researchers, and policymakers. Pandemic data are be contextualized through the collection of first-person accounts of the COVID-19 experience in Arctic communities. The team is also developing geovisualization tools and analyze datasets to address urgent questions related to the spread and geography of COVID-19 in the Arctic, assessing containment and mitigation policies and evaluating whether case fatality rates are affected by environmental, socioeconomic, and/or geographic variables. Long-term curation of Arctic COVID-19 data and data products will ensure availability for future analysis, historical study and policy consideration.
This project is supported by NSF Award #2034886.
Methods:
The research team builds on their expertise in collection and analysis of diverse, multilingual datasets relevant to the incidence and spread of COVID-19 in the Arctic. Georeferenced quantitative data from North America, Scandinavia, and Russia are being collected from publicly available databases; variables will include basic demographic data, and rates of testing, morbidity, and mortality. Qualitative data on pandemic response, quarantine measures, mitigation efforts, and official announcements are being geotagged and catalogued for theme- and location-based searches. Multilingual narrative accounts of the experience of COVID-19 in Arctic communities will be collected virtually and, with informed consent, made available on the project's data hub.