Taking the pulse of COVID-19: a spatiotemporal perspective

Abstract

The sudden outbreak of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) swept across the\nworld in early 2020, triggering the lockdowns of several billion people across\nmany countries, including China, Spain, India, the U.K., Italy, France,\nGermany, and most states of the U.S. The transmission of the virus accelerated\nrapidly with the most confirmed cases in the U.S., and New York City became an\nepicenter of the pandemic by the end of March. In response to this national and\nglobal emergency, the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center brought together a\ntaskforce of international researchers and assembled implemented strategies to\nrapidly respond to this crisis, for supporting research, saving lives, and\nprotecting the health of global citizens. This perspective paper presents our\ncollective view on the global health emergency and our effort in collecting,\nanalyzing, and sharing relevant data on global policy and government responses,\ngeospatial indicators of the outbreak and evolving forecasts; in developing\nresearch capabilities and mitigation measures with global scientists, promoting\ncollaborative research on outbreak dynamics, and reflecting on the dynamic\nresponses from human societies.\n