Geovisualization: an effective approach to COVID-19 spatial analysis

Abstract

Geotechnologies were widely used during the pandemic period. The use of geotechnologies was not restricted to monitoring, controlling, and combating the pandemic. Research published in Brazil and worldwide has revealed the usefulness of geotechnologies for education, tourism, and waste management. Naturally, geotechnologies have also been widely used in the geovisualization of COVID-19. This research aims to offer a solution capable of providing public managers with current and easy-to-interpret information for monitoring, controlling, and developing effective public policies to combat the pandemic. The research presents two interactive dashboards that are easy to use, updatable in real-time, and offer multiple space-time analyses of COVID-19. These dashboards contribute to developing effective public policies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and other epidemiological phenomena and cover the technological gap for geovisualization technologies that simultaneously analyze space and time. The developed dashboards have features that allow analyzing the space-time evolution of COVID-19, taking into account patient information. This is relevant news for coping with the pandemic, as age and comorbidity correlate with the chances of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Another point of originality is the possibility of analyzing the evolution of the pandemic around specific spatial geometries. This functionality is highly relevant to ensure flexibility in planning policies to combat the pandemic for critical locations, such as, for example, around hospitals, shopping malls, avenues, highways, neighborhoods, and more vulnerable communities.