Beyond the Surface presents a simple one-page view that helps the layman understand some connections between geography and COVID-19 that aren't obvious.
We used data from the World Air Quality Index, which takes measurements of the atmosphere from the Environmental Protection Agencies local to each country. Many of these EPAs work directly with data gathered from satellites; in the United States, NASA collaborates with the ESA to synthesize data collected both on Earth and in orbit.
Beyond the Surface was originally planned as a hyper-interactive demonstration that would show a wide variety of filters and overlays to allow people greater insights into the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team noticed that while there was an abundance of data for COVID-19, there wasn't much visually comparing geographical factors involving Earth’s atmosphere and disease mortality and infection rates. So, using the expertise of our researchers, data analyst, publicist, and web designer, we collected, analyzed, and worked on a visualization of data involving geographic and medical data from different cities across the world. We still have some work to go when it comes to making our data interactive, but we laid much of the groundwork for that over the past 48 hours. Our website uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to interactively display the data we collected and our written analysis.
Ultimately, due technical and time constraints, the scope of the project had to be reduced.
Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-source-data)
World Air Quality Index (https://aqicn.org/data-platform/covid19/verify/180e3853-ab15-4aa4-b75c-242368a5e42a)
Pollution and Increased risk for respiratory illnesses like COVID-19:
Temperature and Humidity: