NFORS: New Covid-19 base dashboard available

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We have developed a new base dashboard that provides several useful visualizations to serve as a start to our users’ examination of their COVID-19 call data. The dashboard is available when creating a new workspace. As we have discussed in an earlier post, deciding how to identify your COVID-19 calls is key. We cannot make this determination for our users as each user has a different situation.

Features

The new coronavirus dashboard features some familiar visualizations and some less common ones. The following discussion is under the assumption that you have determined the filters needed to properly identify your COVID-19 calls:

Covid-19 base dashboard, available by creating a new workspace and choosing to include it.

• Incidents — Supplies the total incidents over the time period in question
• Incident Map Gridded — A geospatial heat map of incident counts
• Yesterday vs. 3 days ago — This visualization provides the percentage change in the total number of COVID-19 calls between the total number of calls on the most recent date in the date-time picker, and the total number of calls from 3 days before. For example, if on 04–04–2020 you had responded to 30 COVID-19 calls, and on 04–01–2020 you had responded to 60 calls, then the value displayed would be calculated as follows:
  (((30–60)/30)-1)*100 = -100%
  In other words, your calls on 04–04–2020 are 100% of 04–04–2020’s total call volume less than your calls on 04–01–2020.
• Yesterday vs. 3 days ago line — This is a line graph representation of the above metric, displaying historic trends.
• Incidents by First Due — The number of COVID-19 calls coming in from the various first due areas of the department. This may help identify areas with unusual concentrations of COVID-19 calls.
• Average Calls per Day — The number of incoming COVID-19 calls per day.

Additional view of COVID-19 base dashboard, displaying additional metrics.

• Key metrics — A summary of key department performance metrics, the 90th percentiles of First Turnout, First Travel, and Total Event (event open to event close) times
• Incidents by Units — The number of COVID-19 calls responded to by each unit. This may provide insights into which units are most exposed to COVID-19.
• Incident Comments — A table displaying the individual incident information, along with that incident’s dispatcher comments, and then the resources assigned to that incident, including units and personnel. This will help with detailed examinations of calls, and may serve as a place to help you tweak your filters for COVID-19 calls.

Conclusion

This new dashboard is constructed to provide some initial visualizations that should provide a good foundation to our users who are addressing COVID-19 concerns. We want to emphasize again that good data collection is key. If your department has not yet determined a set method of classifying COVID-19 calls, be it through a dispatch type or through dispatcher comments, now is the time to do so! We believe such information will be immediately actionable, but even if not, it could serve as an important source of information for your city and other agencies examining the spread and impact of this virus.