EAGER: NewsStand CoronaViz: A Map Query Interface for Tracking the Spread of COVID-19

随着COVID-19的持续快速传播，能够跟踪其随时间的进展显然非常重要，以便更好地准备预测其在新地区的出现和传播以及其在地区的存在下降，从而导致或证明“重新开放”的决定。 有许多应用程序和网站可以监控官方发布的病例数量，这可能是跟踪COVID-19进展的最准确方法;然而，它们不一定能描绘出全貌。为了开始填补官方报告中的空白，该项目将开发新闻站CoronaViz（简称CoronaViz）网络应用程序，旨在允许用户通过分析与COVID-19真实的传播相关的地理标记新闻文章和推文中的关键字流行率，探索COVID-19讨论中的地理传播-CoronaViz用户将可以访问与确诊病例数、活跃病例数、死亡数、以及经由地图查询接口的恢复（在提供它们的情况下）。 它们还将具有使用各种时间窗口大小（天、周、月或其组合）以及用户定义的由直接操纵动作指定的变化空间窗口大小（例如，平移、缩放和悬停）以及文本地（例如，以包含大陆、国家、州或省或县的名称表示）。 其结果是一个动画，也支持缩放，这意味着用户放大地图，他们得到更多的数据，而不是放大的数据，这是在大多数现有系统的情况下。 CoronaViz不仅限于COVID-19，还可用于埃博拉等其他疾病。 如果COVID-19大流行卷土重来，拥有CoronaViz这样的系统是有用的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

With the rapid continuing spread of COVID-19, it is clearly important to be able to track its progress over time in order to be better prepared to anticipate its emergence and spread in new regions as well as declines in its presence in regions thereby leading to or justifying "reopening" decisions. There are many applications and web sites that monitor officially released numbers of cases which are likely to be the most accurate methods for tracking the progress of COVID-19; however, they do not necessarily paint a complete picture. To begin filling any gaps in official reports, the project will develop the NewsStand CoronaViz (abbreviated as CoronaViz) web application aimed at allowing users to explore the geographic spread in discussions about COVID-19 through analysis of keyword prevalence in geotagged news articles and tweets in relation to the real spread of COVID-19 as measured by the confirmed cases numbers reported by the authorities.CoronaViz users will have access to dynamic variants of the disease-related variables corresponding to the number of confirmed cases, active cases, deaths, and recoveries (where they are provided) via a map query interface. They will also have the ability to step forward and backward in time using both a variety of temporal window sizes (day, week, month, or combinations thereof) in addition to user-defined varying spatial window sizes specified by direct manipulation actions (e.g., pan, zoom, and hover) as well as textually (e.g., by the name of the containing continent, country, state or province, or county). The result is an animation and that also supports zooming which means that users zoom in on a map they get more data rather than magnified data as is the case in most existing systems. CoronaViz is not restricted to COVID-19 and can be used for other diseases such as Ebola. Having a system such as CoronaViz is useful should the COVID-19 pandemic return.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.