US Covid Atlas v2: New Tools for 2021
As we enter 2021, what tools and insights do we need to understand the pandemic?
As COVID-19 rates spike to new highs in the US and elsewhere, it’s more important than ever to understand and communicate the current situation. That’s always been the mission of the US Covid Atlas — enabling access to current, validated county-level data and spatial analysis to better understand the spread in communities and to bolster planning efforts. We’ve recently incorporated state level testing data to the US Covid Atlas and worked to expand our messaging to Instagram, Twitter, and other social media. Our recent Reddit post gained some attention, and highlighted the need for visually compelling and interesting maps.
As part of the long-term development of the Atlas website, we have refactored the code into a the frontend framework, React. This refactor allows us to provide more powerful visualizations, performance, and a more flexible and ambitious roadmap moving forward.
What’s New?
Our new features in the refactor center on more precise temporal control, a new 3D view for compelling visualizations, and improved user interface.
New Visualization Mode: 3D
The 3D visualization mode can create engaging visualizations by emphasizing the contrast of any variables. As in the screenshot above, the 3D view also reveals what’s going on behind the scenes with the hotspot (LISA / Local Moran) analysis. Here, you can see both the color scale based on the hotspots, and the vertical scale of the actual values. Soon, we’ll be adding the capacity to compare two separate variables on the color scale and height scale, such as Cases Per 100k vs Raw Case Count, Community Health Factors like Age vs Fatality, and other combinations.
Improved User Interface
As the functionality of the Atlas has grown with new overlay and resource layers, visualization types, and variables, the complexity of the interfaces has also increased. The new Atlas UI simplifies the variable controls, and focuses each panel on specific data control: the data source and map variables controls data selection and representation, the re-designed slider controls the date selection and aggregation, and the new floating cases line-chart displays time selection and trends. Additionally, we’ve worked to improve font legibility, contrast, and readability, particularly for mobile users.
Faster Load Times and a More Flexible Back End
Under the hood, we’ve completely revamped the code that powers the Atlas. Using the React framework with Redux for managing the data state means that our development process can be simplified and streamlined; developers or tinkerers looking to re-mix or re-use our tools can do so more easily. Interactions and data loading are improving as well, and will continue to get better.
Other JavaScript frameworks (namely, Vue and Svelte) have unique advantages over React for performance and development. For now, React is close to an industry standard, and the primary geospatial viz library we use, Deck.gl, is packaged and documented React-first.
What’s Next? We Need Your Help.
The work on the refactor is well underway, but we need your help to make sure that the changes we’ve made work with how you use or might use the Atlas. Give it a spin at here and let us know any thoughts you have on the feedback form here or via email at contact@theuscovidatlas.org.
