Factoring Humanity| Human Factors

Human Factors

The emergence and spread of infectious diseases, like COVID-19, are on the rise. Can you identify patterns between population density and COVID-19 cases and identify factors that could help predict hotspots of disease spread?

Factoring Humanity: Stop the Spread of Rona

Summary

In this project, COVID-19 data was looked at to see the likelihood of spread in a higher number of populated places. Looking at population densities versus the number of cases of the Coronavirus, it is seen that it is more likely for a place that is highly populated to have a higher number of infected people. For example, China, the most densely populated country in the world, and the epicenter of the outbreak had a high number of the population infected as they were very densely packed.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Our project collects data to detect and alert the human population regarding the hotspots of COVID-19. The data collected will be used to create a health alert app. Additionally, the data will be used to alert different sources of media, to make people more aware of the current global situation.

Our app will also be able to help people if they need any COVID-19 updates, travel restriction news, CDC alerts, and more information. As a future step, this app will be enhanced to include other global crises (like the Novel Coronavirus). With the app, we will be able to track it and prevent it from growing to a large scale.

How We Developed This Project

The spread of the COVID-19 virus is the most pressing issue in our society today. Without making large advancements in this area, we will continue to suffer the terrible effects of this disease. Our team was inspired by the population density maps of the world overlaid over the map of infection rates. This challenge provided the unique opportunity to show how the mapping of humanity spreads disease. We first looked at the maps and data of people in areas heavily affected by the virus. We were interested in the fact that COVID-19 is not bound by geographic and temporal locations, and that it can very easily survive anywhere. We researched the virus and looked for data on the exact spread of the virus and how it moved from country to country. After doing our research, we gathered ideas for the solution. We decided that an app will be the best solution, in order to make people in the world more aware of COVID-19. For creating the app and alerts, we will use code.org's app lab. During our project, we found it a little difficult to find materials of research on how the virus exactly spread, as the specificity that we were looking for was hard to find online. The easiest data to obtain was that concerning population densities of people. There were many maps and sources from which we could pull data.

Data & Resources

1. Fisher, Julia Freeland. “Social Connections Matter Now More than Ever.” Edited by Clayton Christensen Institute, Christenseninstitute.org, Christensen Institute, 2 Apr. 2020, www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/how-and-why-to-prioritize-relationships-in-your-covid-19-response-plan/?gclid=CjwKCAjwiMj2BRBFEiwAYfTbCjpXVOmUDmkniYR2jFYp0fyMUJd98sBWUVzDeTKsoMGR2hQlrVyUExoC-a4QAvD_BwE.

2. Joseph, Andrew, et al. “The Coronavirus Is Spreading. Here's How Experts Forecast the next Hotspot.” STAT, 28 Apr. 2020, www.statnews.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-how-bad-it-gets-different-communities/.

3. Patel, Kasha. “Earth Matters - How the Coronavirus Is (and Is Not) Affecting the Environment.” NASA, NASA, 5 Mar. 2020, earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2020/03/05/how-the-coronavirus-is-and-is-not-affecting-the-environment/.

4. Strum, Beckie. “Experts Say These Factors Could Help Predict Where the next Coronavirus Hot Spots in the U.S. Will Be Outside of New York City.” Marketwatch.com, MarketWatch, 26 Mar. 2020, www.marketwatch.com/story/experts-say-these-factors-could-help-predict-where-the-next-coronavirus-hot-spots-in-the-us-will-be-outside-of-new-york-city-2020-03-26.

5. World Health Organization Editors. “WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard.” World Health Organization, World Health Organization, 31 May 2020, 6:26 CST, covid19.who.int/.

Tags
#socialdistancing, #staysafeathome, #byebyeCOVID-19, #factoringhumanity
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.