Coronavirus backgrounder

[Update: more dashboards local to Cambridgeshire shown in next blogpost]

This pandemic affects us all. You might be reading this from home. And while social distancing may become the norm, social isolation needn't be: Use social media, ye olde telephone, reach out! Here are some local resources gleaned from group meetings, the twitterverse and simple curiosity.

Coronavirus time-enabled maps

[Update: thrilled to present at How to do Map Stuff: a Live Community Sharing Event
Update: The Times' Sam Joiner just cleared  England COVID map for London crowding using ridge map animation] 

Local dashboards updated daily from Public Heath England data are bolstered by other open data: As coronavirus affects most notably the eldest and youngest, Office for National Statistics age distribution is a welcome addition to case distribution maps. A static web map showed cases and age distribution side-by-side - a story map has the full back story on its derivation - Kenneth Field's "coxcombs"  post static time-series that helped identify here vulnerable groups of elder and younger populations, and to overlay them atop progressive case numbers over a set time period.

Cambridgeshire COVID Info Portal 1¼ years later

Almost 1½ years from the onset of COVID, here a video of the info portal created using ESRI dashboard, inspired from the Johns Hopkins University pioneering hit - same tech with more data and expertise - our own info portal is a handy  bit.ly/CamCOVIDinfo.

Cornavirus update - Part X

[ Update: MSOA data only rolling weekly on NHSx site here or via the PHE API here
Update 2: next installment shows further marked increases in the second lockdown ]

 ... A lot has happened since the last update: not only may we have a second wave as seen in the bottom left-hand panel below, but also NHSx posted new Ward-level data in a format ready-to-use for coxcomb maps.

Coronavirus daily update - Part II

[ Update: see a follow-up post on how ONS data augment the NHSx death statistics ]

Daily updates brought you COVID-19 data for England in a dashboard that posted according to your desktop or mobile device (tablet coming soon). These statistics from NHSx show, however, only hospital data. It's been noted in the press that cases and especially deaths outside hospitals are not captured. ONS captures death data but not in a single dashboard like NHSx and two weeks behind.

Coronavirus update - Part IV

[Update: see next a wrap-up of COVID-19 cases & deaths data across NHSx & ONS]

The last update added ONS' COVID-related death data, which augment the cases and deaths posted by NHSx at the Local Authority level akin to Counties. The post ended with: Data will be added as found and/or made available: the goal is Parish-level data to mash up with our climate change maps. We already added in the second last update a map from Cambridgeshire Live, and we now see in Cambridgeshire Independent ONS "death data by ward and by villages".

Cottenham Open CIC rebooted

Community Engagement  1, ... 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 & 21

Update: the next post (here) will show how a blog post on creating maps, is created by generating prompts  using Bing AI in a Udemy course on prompt engineering following STAR (style-task-audience-role).

Re-engaging après-COVID what is in LinkedIn, below & Esri Hub: Part 1 outlined Community Engagement. Part 2 built a story introducing the community. Part 3 tied together community maps and climate mapping. Part 4 introduced a process framework for this community engagement. Part 5 expanded on our aim toward a community engagement.  Part 6 added our own Wikipedia Gazetteer as we build up the local landscape. Part 7 showed a draft Press Release introducing our social enterprise. Part 8 on coastal inundation scenarios adds some parameters in the debate. Part 9 on temperature anomaly scenarios further constrains the debate. Part 10 followed up village engagement process via recent Parish Council update. Part 11 added flood risks to coastal inundation and temperature regime models. Part 12 described Cambridgeshire Parishes affected by sea level rise. And finally here we introduce AI with a local twist.

AI Prompt Engineering Trial 2

Community Engagement 1,... 20, 21, 22 & 23

Update 2: next blog installment is here.

Update1: Medium prof channel reflects this here.

My post here, starting my experiment to convert my CIC (non profit) from Cottenham.info to Cottenham.ai, showed how can we use AI (Wikipedia) for good. My CIC started to address rural isolation in East Anglia in light of climate change and the pandemic (here and here). After a COVID hiatus forced this reassessment, the advent of AI piqued our interest beyond the hype in the press - see my companion Medium series on this topic, following four posts from The future is digital… only it’s not what you think! here - this lead into a curious interaction and my partner finding a new direction.

A brief history of mine

Update 2: see my journey on the web here.

Update 1: a duo of posts on my Medium professional channel here relates my early computing.

As I go through a 'hard reset' in my life and plan to exit social media, this may be a good time to pause and reflect on my IT journey.

Calgary 1986 see here

Although I started on mainframes at Univ. of Calgary 1979 (here), I transitioned to desktop at Queen's Univ. (here). That post's intro lists articles illustrating the progression from geology to computer mapping and GIS. The reason I was able to do that, is that my eight years of high-school Latin allowed me to read, fix and re-run Unix scripts running petrodata management software in the oil industry, where I spent the bulk of my career.  

That then prepared me for HTML coding in the early pre-Internet days... This was 1986, 3 yrs. before Tim Berners-Lee ushered in the World Wide Web! The City of Calgary in W CAN was optically wired by the then government telephone co. AGT (now Telus) for free, betting on the fact they'd recoup the money - and they did so handsomely - via the traffic of all the oil companies jammed downtown. This was against a backdrop of the Province of Alberta having forward-looking Land Information System based in the capital Edmonton a couple hours drive north (here), but that was the heyday of early data transmission protocols (rpc)  and open binary data (EBCDIC) that opened the data flow cross province on said optical network.

Anecdote 1: as an undergrad at University of Calgary, I learned of Ted Nelson's Xanadu project (here), to catalog the world's information via what later became Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) - few people realise Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent anything, he built on exisiting systems... as we all do - but Nelson was a propeller-head who couldn't  market his idea (here). John Walker, co-founder of Autodesk, reportedly bought the technolgy but it never got anywhere... I heard of this as I was cooling my heels awaiting to meet him, with Carol Bartz his then PA - the same who eventually lead Autodesk then Yahoo, a true pioneering woman in IT - when a surveyor friend and I tried to sell them the idea of a mapping front-end to AutoCAD ... in 1986! Remember MS Windows was launched just the year before (see Side Story here and illustration here incl. photo above). Did you know I received a copy of  Windows v.1.O as part of a hardware upgrade to boost my computer's memory from 640Kb to 1Mb?! Sidebar: Was Bill Gates not famously quoted that no personal computer would ever need over 640Kb RAM  (here)?

CD-ROMs

Note that was the early to mid eighties and the web had yet ot be invented! In fact I helped launch a CD-ROM publishing firm, that put all of the Alberta well data on one CD and petroleum production info on another... using a Texas school board hashing algorithm. CDs were so rare in fact, that we leased the CD readers together with the discs themselves. Aside from the hashing algorithm, CD-ROM publishing conferences at the USGS with Gerry McFaul encouraged us to publish CD data. Another effect of pioneering CDs was that we shipped data to Dublin OH to have the CDs pressed... and US customs did not know what Exabyte data tapes were, so we shipped data as videos!

Anecdote 2: Microsoft was largely credited with popularizing CD for software distribution. While that is true, the real initiative was the US Dept. of Defense - the same people whose DARPA developed the precursor to the internet linking US military to government contractors, chiefly universities in the beginning - the reason? In the Cold War era, it was feared the Soviets might detonate an atom bomb at 5-10 mi. altitude that would fry the entire electronic infrastructure of mainland US, thus disabling the military - oh! and the rest of the country is collateral - I learned via the USGS mentioned above, that CDs were immune to resulting electromagnetic pulses.

Anecdote 3: as I had been on contract to the Geological Survey of Canada Calgary office across from the university, we visited the geological library and offered to scan the index cards to electronically catalog them on CD-ROM - after all our software came from a school library application - do you know what the librarian said then? "If we made the catalog that easily accessible, can you imagine the amount of work that might create?" We obviously had work to do, convincing a traditional business of the advantages of electronic access, taken for granted now!

 

Pre-WWW

Notwithstanding work on CD-ROMs, we benefited form the optical network to start building HTTP networks as we called them, as internet never mind intranet or the WWW hadn't been invented yet, not outside DARPA. My blog posts the first screenshot of an early 'website' (term as yet n/a) under 1986 at top left of the banner menu:

Progressively larger firms in the petroleum service sector took me to Texas, where we did lots of things on the nascent internet. That's when I built my first website, playing with HTML formats on my life and work stories by year, patterned after a glossary I co-authored with another counsellor. You'll recognise the website structure inherited or inspired by my first site a decade earlier:

Standards & Metadata

Parallel to this, I got involved in standards and metadata via CNC/CODATA to try and rationalize semantics of geological terms, which are quite complex. At the time the mining geological community and the USGS made some inroads, and the North American Geological Data Model emerged from that. But that was a long and arduous process that didn't come to fruition until after I switched to GIS in California in 2000. That is in turn written up in the manuscript splitting data into concepts (data taxonomy that evolve over time) and occurrence (geographic location that are fixed). In fact I took one of the geological map sheets and formatted it accordingly as an example: 

There followed a series of standards&metadata papers given at Esri and followed up on my blog and Medium channel (here, here, here, here, here, here and here) as I moved from US to UK. That put me in touch with AGI and eventually the Geospatial Commission, who have big plans supporting digital twins to enhance and enable UK infrastructure.

Volunteered Geographic Information

After I left "da awl bidness" (the oil business Texas-style) in the economic downturn, I became full time Volunteered Geographic Information as this blog is titled. I started a Community Interest Company to address East Anglia rural isolation affected by climate change and the pandemic via local community engagement. I also bird-dogged COVID polling NHS and ONS data. This is on the back of using Ordnance Survey parish data released in public domain with HC Derby Medieval Fendlands and Drainage of the Fens data to build up  a series of agro-history maps here... since Domesday in 1067! Sharing that was followed by a series on interacting with data agencies and improving their data ending here. My highlight was running a YouTube livestream on dsiplaying & tracking COVID data here.

Building from that I drew a series of sea level rise maps and training materials branching into environmental issues for East Anglia re: climate change ending here. I also engaged in the new medium of story maps key along the top level menu, a professional portfolio through the Community Interest Company as well as some of personal interest. In order to help others build the same, I shared here a series of "build your own" resources. This topographic map has sea level rise calculated  from NOAA:

I also posted atop the blog my professional Medium channel on various geodata topics here. Feel free also to peruse my YouTube channel and other resources along the top level menu bar of this blog: It is only visible on the desktop version, so on mobile make sure you scroll to the bottom and select "View web version".

Community Interest Company blog recap

Community Engagement 1,... 20, 21, 22, 23 & 24

As I move away from Cambridge to SW FR in my family home, I will also exit socials and rethink my online engagement, where I lost all my pensions! I have also moved my domain to a new provider, which preserves this blog, Mind the Map and My Year in Kuwait above, but loses the superseded web page and my email now on Yahoo. I do, however, stay engaged with my Community Interest Company Cambridgeshire.ai at right. See following post here.

Coronavirus update - Part V

Update 4: another week another uptick, more on health data trials&tribulations next
Update 3: the uptick smoothed... but "flatten the curve" certainly hasn't happened yet!
Update 2: and right on cue: UK coronavirus cases no longer falling, ONS figures show
Update 1: an uptick in ONS deaths reported a week behind matches last week's uptick in NHSx cases... flattening the curve? Not!  ]

Previously we reported on extending COVID-19 datasets down to Ward (MSOA) from County (UTLA) level. To recap, NHSx post cases and deaths from hospitals in a single dashboard, whereas ONS post death data across many systems with geo-socio-economics. And while we report on the highest geographic granularity publicly available, at the country level weekly reports are the common denominator across agencies. ONS posts data weekly 2-4 weeks behind depending on scale as discussed before, whereas NHSx posts daily 1-2 days behind also discussed before. Having calculated weekly data from NHSx to match ONS time stamps. they're graphed here (click images to enlarge).

Coronavirus update - Part VII

 Since the last update, NHSx has significantly upgraded Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK:

• In addition to Cases and Death, Testing and Healthcare are on offer in various subdivisions. 
• On the downside, we still don't have Release / Recovery data, which appeared briefly mid-March under PHE tenure, then no more under NHSx. 
• On the upside we get Middle layer Super Output Area (MSOA) or Ward-level equivalent, a vast improvement over Upper Tier Local Authority (UTLA) or County-level equivalent data. 

Coronavirus update - Part XI

[ Update 1: Still no sign of the second wave abating and deaths on the increase again
  Update 2 : next installment shows how the second wave numbers just keep growing ]

Further to our last blogpost, the second lockdown resulted from / is reflected in both sharp increases in cases passing 1.5M, and marked ones in deaths passing 70,000 and on the increase again. 

"So long and thanks for the maps", Part IV

 Over 1½ yrs. ago Part I said that I left socials and geo work... well not quite! I did quit all activism and will soon return to my family home in France left almost 50 yrs. ago.

I left now by entering the 2023 Story Map competition with "a story about conserving Earth’s lands and waters": East Anglia Fenlands: Peatlands Restoration to mitigate Climate Change sums up my work in East Anglia under Cottenham Open - introduced here 4½ years ago as Local community engagement - you can follow my professional portfolio either at top right of my blog home in desktop mode, or my story map direct. 

Coronavirus update - Part VIII

 Last update showed progress in Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK especially in higher geographic resolution: Ward down from County but not yet Postcode levels. In this ever-evolving scene however:

• NHSx no longer posts death data in its legacy stream (scroll all the way to the bottom), 
• and cases are no longer posted daily (check "Last updated" date at the very bottom)

Fortunately Office of National Statistics (ONS) death data had already been tapped as in Part III. So our dashboard below CamCOVIDinfo is still on offer... do keep coming back for weekly updates!

Coronavirus daily update

Issues with the mnemonic link below? Try one of these! Mobile, tablet or desktop
Final update: single URL for desktop, tablet and mobile: bit.ly/CamCOVIDinfo
15 Apr. 2020: NHSX provides now COVID-19 daily updates from their new site
Update 5: further maps adding date of  confirmation and provenance in next post
Update 4: tweak two dashboards to work better on desktop and on mobile (see final)
Update 3: added population by age group for comparison, see bottom of right panel
Update 2: streamlined with one map incorporating all data + complete instructions
Update 1: mobile version added, added Persons Recovered (removed by PHE later)
Correction: user feedback showed importance of symbology to convey information

Digital Nomads and Digital Divide

 Here is the Parliament   f i n a l l y    addressing the challenges posed by the pandemic, with a fairly comprehensive review of the facts they gathered.

Coronavirus update - Part XII

[ Update: ONS deaths still rise slightly, NHSx cases resurgence continues topping 6.5M ]

Since our previous update, a third national lockdown resulted from the numbers that just keep increasing, as well as a second strain of the virus appearing but not split out in NHSx stats. That is patent in the comparative graphs below, updated as per above: