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

随着COVID-19的快速持续传播，显然重要的是能够跟踪其进展，以便更好地做好准备，预测其在新地区的出现和传播，以及该地区存在的减少，从而导致或证明“重新开放”的决定。有许多应用程序和网站监测官方公布的病例数，这可能是跟踪COVID-19进展的最准确方法；然而，它们并不一定能描绘出一幅完整的图景。为了开始填补官方报告中的任何空白，该项目将开发NewsStand CoronaViz（简称CoronaViz）网络应用程序，旨在通过分析地理标记新闻文章和推文中与COVID-19实际传播相关的关键字流行程度（以当局报告的确诊病例数衡量），使用户能够探索COVID-19讨论中的地理传播情况。CoronaViz用户可以通过地图查询界面访问与确诊病例数、活跃病例数、死亡人数和康复人数（在提供这些数据的地方）相对应的疾病相关变量的动态变体。除了通过直接操作操作（例如，平移、缩放和悬停）以及文本（例如，通过包含大陆、国家、州或省或县的名称）指定的用户定义的不同空间窗口大小之外，它们还将能够使用各种时间窗口大小（日、周、月或其组合）在时间上向前和向后步进。结果是一个动画，也支持缩放，这意味着用户在地图上放大他们得到更多的数据，而不是像大多数现有系统那样放大数据。冠状病毒不仅限于COVID-19，还可以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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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.