Abstract
The catastrophic eruption in the world scenario of the breaking pandemic forced the application of all existent scientific knowledge, but also triggered the development of new technical tools and procedures. This chapter is focused on setting forth the practical technological efforts based on the spatial georeferencing by coordinate systems and on the treatment of satellite images as means for tracking the positive cases, for recognizing the spatial infection´s behavior, and for identifying the real physical changes in the spatial landscape. The cases set forth here pertain to three techniques, namely the development of visual dashboards, the tracking resources developed, and the deployment of imagery captured by satellite perception.
TopBackground
Once the pandemic boosted, some summarized reviews were made for setting forth a myriad of publications and research works dealing with GIS strategies and spatial analysis intended to understand the behaviour of the infection and to define feasible contributions for overcoming such an enormous public health crisis. In Ahasan et al. (2020) a review about the set of approaches applied in the GIS realm to visualize and analyze the pandemic.
The application of the imagery treatment had a broad development in disparate fields from environment to military purposes. The set of techniques are based on the definition of partial sampling and the consolidation of neural networks to elucidate spatial objects to be identified (Minetto et al., 2020). In other research a set of spatial features are processed for be interpreted, having a basic source aerial photographs which are digitized onto orthophoto and can be handled as an independent polygon theme (US Geological Survey, 2006). The interpretation of satellite images can be used profusely in the classification of vehicles, the tracking of new medical infrastructures and for detecting the movements of planes, ships and locomotives. The analysis of imagery has demonstrated to be pertinent for assessing the effects of other catastrophes for identifying destroyed buildings, blocked roads and for implementing logistic operatives for help. The complete evolution of the situation can be compared by means of the juxtaposition of pre- and post- disaster photos (Minetto et al., 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Dashboard: A configurable web app with full visualization and handling of layers, charts, figures, statistics, time series and so on, intended to follow up the evolution of COVID19 pandemics, either at a local level and for some cases, at a global level.
GIS (Geographic Information System): An informatic and conceptual framework for rendering a diversity of human, social, environmental, and natural phenomena by means of overlapped maps arranged as layers.
Lockdown: The mandatory restriction to the outdoor displacements and commutation for preventing the direct contact with non-familiar people.
Imagery: The set of captured images by means of orthographic process or satellite image procedure.
Tracking: The set of strategies for tracing the route described by individuals in their spatial displacements.
Network externalities: In the digital age, the positive effect for the app designers or multisided-markets operators of having a further wide network of users is a profitable situation for increasing the effectiveness and the dissemination of the digital products, apps, platforms, etc. The individual users appreciate the higher quantity of people using the same platform, and this effect can be enhanced further by the incorporation of additional users.
Curfew: Is the mandatory order to remain indoors with the clear prohibition to stay in the street for public convenience.
Rendering: The noticeable visualization of a GIS process in terms of maps, layers, or images.