The University of Washington’s Humanistic GIS Laboratory (HGIS Lab) recently launched an interactive map of the novel coronavirus. Led by assistant geography professor Bo Zhao, HGIS Lab developed the interactive map to track the outbreak of the coronavirus by pulling in data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, the People’s Republic of China, and government agencies in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.
The map is updated with new information every few hours. In developing the Novel Coronavirus Infection Map, Zhao explained that “the coronavirus is societal issue that people can gain perspective on by seeing it on a map.”
For the most part, statistics are presented at the country level with the exception of mainland China which is broken down by province. The map isn’t as granular as the interactive map developed by Johns Hopkins University which was the first interactive map built to visualize near-realtime coronavirus data.
The information page for the map application does mention that there are plans provide finer-scale data for China, the U.S., and Canada in the next version. Users can click on each Chinese province and country where there are confirmed cases to see a graphical representation of the cases. Users can also toggle between basemaps with grayscale, streets, and satellite imagery as options. Although there is no attribution, it appears the basemaps are OpenStreetMap.
There is a link to access the data but it’s a SQLite format file which many users won’t know how to read it. There is a link to access a CSV version of the data but users will need to first click on the “?” near the map title to access the information page and then click on the CSV link provided.
Visit:
- Novel Coronavirus Infection Map
- Interactive map shows worldwide spread of coronavirus, University of Washington Press Release
