COVID-19 and New Pathways for Development Data
USAID’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning Senior Economist Peter Richards reflects on the role of observational data and real time inference for development.
“What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest — health, integrity, purity (if you like) — is a product… of a vigilance that must never falter. “
“This business is everybody’s business.”
Albert Camus
Fifty years ago, the American mathematician Edward Lorenz showed the potential of otherwise minor, insignificant and apparently random actions to generate and reshape long term outcomes. Lorenz, of course, described this in meteorological terms. The flutter of a butterfly’s wings in a distant corner of the world sets into motion an atmospheric cycle that manifests years later as a tornado on the plains of Texas. In today’s highly connected world, the spatial and temporal dimensions that once insulated us from each other, or which once separated the butterfly from the tornado, are being compressed. A microbial mutation in East Asia wields the power to disrupt the fabric of social, health, and economic systems across the globe and the capacity to do so within mere months.
The spread of COVID-19 has shown the volatile effect that disruptive health pandemics can have on the global economy, both in speed and in reach. For the development community to keep pace with such rapidly moving threats, the capacity to identify and monitor disruptions in real-time, and with spacial precision, is crucial.
Over the past weeks, as the world’s focus has turned to combating the spread of COVID-19, new pathways, many drawn from the comprehensive surveillance capacities of the digital age, are emerging to meet these needs. What these data lack in clear sampling or weighting structure they make up with their ability to be aggregated and analyzed at nearly any spatial or temporal resolution. This flexibility, which enables highly precise geographic assessments, and near-real time analysis, has rendered these non-traditional datasets some of the most revealing tools for understanding the spread and impact of COVID-19.
These new inferential tools and approaches are offering critical insights into the spread and transmission of COVID-19, and the economic impacts which have followed in its wake. Consider, for example, how new researchers are identifying new symptoms and, in the absence of rigorous testing, quantifying the spread of COVID-19 through internet search patterns. Or consider how anomalies in Kinsa’s daily, county-level flu tracker may have offered some of the earliest insights on COVID-19 hotspots. By focusing on observable behaviors and conditions within the home, or online, analysts are able to better infer the impact of the disease before it enters official tabulations.
Other efforts are revealing the economic impacts of the COVID-19-driven shutdowns. Anomalies in power use, in pollution, and in foot and vehicular traffic have revealed, often in near real time, the impact, extent and variation in the public responses that followed in the virus’ wake. As early as late February, remote sensing scientists were already documenting the massive disappearance of nitrogen dioxide, a byproduct of fuel combustion, across East Asia and Europe. Shortly thereafter, Descartes Labs, the New Mexico-based predictive intelligence company, was documenting, with spatial and temporal precision, the sudden halving of Americans’ travel in mid-March, and the near paralysis of individual travel in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Many of the new observational and inferential tools developed to track COVID-19 could be adapted for application in the global south. In settings where public institutions may lack the capacity for official testing, or perhaps the willful transparency needed to fight a global pandemic, such tools could offer not only early glimpses into the diseases arrival or spread, but the only available insights on the extent or depth of the pandemic.
USAID’s recently-launched Digital Strategy demonstrates the Agency’s commitment to the responsible use of digital technology and data in development. The Agency’s Digital Strategy encourages investment in open, inclusive, and secure digital enabling environments, and the transfer and development of new analytical tools. This approach not only reveals inadvertent biases, it ensures that new technologies benefit the local economy and build local capacity.
When COVID-19 does recede from the daily headlines, it will be worthwhile for the development community to look at how observational data can be better integrated into mainstream development data systems. As the world becomes more connected, the need to leverage these new tools, and to see the world in real time, will only become more critical.
