The Challenge
The emergence and spread of infectious diseases, like COVID-19, may well continue. Many factors, both environmental and anthropogenic, can contribute to this trend. This challenge explores human activities that may be directly or indirectly related to the spread of COVID-19 locally and around the globe.
Numerous factors can contribute to the spread of infectious diseases, including but not limited to: trade and travel, social activities that increase one’s risk of exposure, and the lack of proper hygiene infrastructure. Do geographic or temporal patterns from COVID-19 disease mapping reveal insights into human factors that may be related to the spread of the disease? Could human activities that impact the environment play an indirect role in furthering COVID-19 spread? Are certain activities correlated with specific disease presentations or increased severity?
Your challenge is to identify patterns between human activity and COVID-19 cases and identify factors that could help predict hotspots of disease spread.
Considerations:
- Consider measuring density during COVID-19 by integrating space-based assets (such as satellite communications and Earth observations) with Earth-based infrastructure (such as buildings) to identify potential COVID-19 hotspots
- You may consider clustering in urban cities versus rural areas
- Consider derived social determinants of health (SDOH), population activity densities due to weather and weather events, and the related SDOH effects on the transmission and predictions of COVID-19.
- Are specific activities related to increased number of susceptible or exposed populations? What factors increase a population’s vulnerability to disease?
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