COVID-19 Open Data Round-up
Even in the midst of a global pandemic, open data continues to be important, paving the way for scientific breakthroughs, as well as enabling timely information-sharing during an unprecedented time of uncertainty and stringent containment measures.
One of the most prominent examples of COVID-19 open data is the Johns Hopkins global cases dashboard (Dong et al., 2020), for which all data collected and displayed are made freely available in a Github repository. This open data dashboard has been widely shared by major U.S. news media outlets, and its visualizations have helped the general public understand the reach and severity of the disease.
Smaller locales are taking the same data sources Johns Hopkins is using to create localized dashboards with additional area-specific information. For instance, the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, coronavirus data hub shows case information, as well as maps of food assistance locations along with restaurants open for takeout and delivery (Dataworks, 2020).
Under a directive from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), in collaboration with the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Microsoft, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, more than 44,000 research outputs related to coronavirus have been made freely available as the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, or CORD-19 (Georgetown University, n.d.). Released openly and in machine-readable JSON format, the dataset will enable the global machine learning community to perform text and data mining in order to uncover insight into SARS-CoV-2 and the current COVID-19 pandemic (Hao, 2020).
In addition to disease research, open data is helping communities understand the scope of COVID-19’s economic impact, through the release of information such as unemployment insurance claims, and organization closures. At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Labor maintains an API that can be used to access their open data on unemployment insurance claims by time series, and many states release similar data. Department of Labor unemployment data has shown that for the week ending in March 21, 2020, Americans filed more than 3 million claims, nearly five times the previous record — and then again, last week (ending in March 28), unemployment claims reached 6 million, shattering the previous week’s record (Schneider, 2020). While this information is concerning, it’s important to disclose it freely and openly, so that governments and other organizations can respond with solutions.
Finally, in library open data news, Kathleen Sullivan — one of ODL’s former interns, now working as an open data consultant for the Washington State Library (WSL) — and her WSL colleagues manually compiled an open dataset about Washington state public library services affected by the COVID-19 outbreak (Sullivan, 2020). The dataset tracks closures and impacts to programs, as well as relaxed fines and library PSAs to patrons about where to obtain factual information about COVID-19.
While the dataset was initially launched as a service to public libraries to compare their own system’s strategy to that of other systems, Sullivan envisions the dataset assisting future research. “Over the longer term, the dataset should ideally serve as a record of how key community gathering places — institutions dedicated to access and support for all — responded to a quickly developing public health emergency. This should be useful for libraries themselves, and anyone else assessing responses to an epidemic,” Sullivan said. Retaining a record of mitigation strategies and other steps employed by libraries could serve to inform future practice, when reviewed at a later date by researchers and other interested parties.
Open data are helping to produce innovative research to stop the COVID-19 pandemic, and to keep the public informed about its impacts — and advancing the use and understanding of open data continues to be the Open Data Literacy project’s primary goal.
Resources:
- Academic Data Science Alliance | COVID-19 Data Science Resources
- COVID19 Tech Handbook
- COVID-19-related data on data.gov
References:
Dataworks. (2020). City of Sioux Falls Coronavirus Resources. https://coronavirus-cityofsfgis.hub.arcgis.com.
Dong, E., Du, H., & Gardner L. (2020). An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time. The Lancet: Infectious Diseases. doi:10.1016/S1473–3099(20)30120–1.
Georgetown University. (n.d.). COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). https://cset.georgetown.edu/covid-19-open-research-dataset-cord-19.
Hao, K. (2020, March 16). Over 24,000 coronavirus research papers are now available in one place. MIT Technology Review. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615367/coronavirus-24000-research-papers-available-open-data.
Schneider, A. (2020, April 2). Staggering: Record 10 million file for unemployment in 2 weeks. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/02/825383525/6-6-million-file-for-unemployment-another-dismal-record.
Sullivan, K. (2020). Washington State Public Library Services Affected by COVID-19. Data.WA.gov. https://data.wa.gov/Culture-and-Community/Washington-State-Public-Library-Services-Affected-/6iab-kcxu.
U.S. Department of Labor Development Portal. (n.d.). OUI Initial Claims. https://developer.dol.gov/expanding-growth/oui-inital-claims/
