Informing the COVID-19 response in developing countries

Planning for COVID-19 using earth observation and data analytics

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As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads across the globe and stretches the healthcare systems of cities like New York, London or Milan to breaking point, we are deeply concerned about how developing countries - our area of work - can deal with it.

Decision-makers need reliable, up-to-date data. Using geospatial data and analytics, we want to contribute to this effort with the resources available to us. Together, we can get started on questions such as:

  • Virus spread: How could the virus spread, based on factors
    such as population clusters, transportation infrastructure, or certain public
    places such as markets or places of worship?

  • Locating testing facilities: Where could testing
    facilities be strategically located? Is electricity and water available?

  • Predicting healthcare bottlenecks: Where are health
    centers, hospitals, hospital beds and ICUs located? Which population groups are
    at particular risk of experiencing bottle- necks or unavailability of health
    services?

This brief report outlines some of these ideas and presents a case study in Ethiopia. The code is forked from the covid19 repository from the Data Partnership authored by Bruno Sánchez-Andrade Nuño. Our code is freely available on github. A visualization can be accessed here.



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