Data Visualization’s Breakthrough Moment in the COVID-19 Crisis
The discipline has made some important contributions over its 300-year history, but perhaps none more so than now
During the COVID-19 crisis, data visualization researchers and professionals rose to the challenge, delivering widely used tools for public explanations, pandemic modeling, and government policy-making. These interactive data visualizations inform the public and guide decision-makers to save lives. Spirited debates center on “flattening the curve,” which is a clear reference to visual representation of the rise and fall of case numbers.
Johns Hopkins University engineering professor Lauren Gardner and her team built a prominent visualization dashboard that shows current worldwide country data, down to the county or province level. Its evolving multiple windows show a great deal of data by way of clickable tabs for those who want more information. Newspapers, TV news programs, and bloggers feature this dashboard, giving it even wider usage.
The dramatic rise of data visualization could be traced to hardware factors such as widespread use of high-resolution large desktop displays tied to powerful computers. Other important trends are the increased availability of vast data resources, familiarity with…
