Geospatial Data Science Response to COVID-19 Crisis and Pandemic Isolation Tracking

Year 2020, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 1 - 7, 15.06.2020

Muzaffer Can İban

Abstract

A novel Coronavirus (COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has become a unique issue topping the global agenda in 2020. Georeferencing any pandemic brings in a spatial extent to monitoring such public health crises. This will be possible only if data patterns about the pandemic cases have practical and biologically relevant value. This article investigates current responses to COVID-19 crisis in the geospatial data science domain, by reviewing the outcomes of the studies carried out. These studies consist of a variety of techniques, such as real-time geospatial databases for pandemic cases, monitoring medical needs, geospatial dashboards, environmental change detection during the pandemic and data collection. Moreover, it introduces pandemic isolation tracking projects and gives the Turkish example to discuss data privacy issues. As a conclusion, the article presents some recommendations and future perspectives for the use of geospatial data science in epidemiological researches.

Keywords

COVID-19, Epidemic Spreading, Geographic Information Systems, Pandemic Isolation Tracking, Geospatial Data

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