CLISEC
Using Volunteered Geographic Information on the COVID-19 pandemic
25 January 2021
New project at CLISEC: Using Volunteered Geographic Information on the COVID-19 pandemic in three Brazilian cities (COVIDGI)
We are happy to announce that a team of CLISEC members will research the COVID-19 pandemic in a new project. The team, led by Dr. Miguel Rodriguez Lopez, secured a grant from the Volkswagen Foundation at the end of 2020, and will start the project in April 2021. In the meantime, the team will present the project about this relevant emerging field of research to the academic community. Follow the project on Twitter for news and updates: @covidgi.
The project is called “Volunteered Geographic Information on the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South: Mixed-methods toolset for vulnerability, impact, and conflict in three Brazilian cities (COVIDGI)”. The central question of the project is: How can decision-making on coronavirus benefit from more agile and precise information through authoritative, open, and VGI-sourced spatial behavioral data? In synthesis, the project presents a new information management toolbox that integrates timely and fine-scale data to include spatial behavior. This framework focuses on vulnerability, impact, and conflict, considering the social connections, inequalities across space and the dynamics of exposure and resilience to the pandemic across time.
To develop this research, the project will combine readily available data sources (e.g., demographics, open data) to volunteered geographic information and qualitative research to set up a replicable toolbox. The aim of the toolbox is to decrease uncertainty on the decision-making process in the responses to the pandemic and will support social spatial behavior modeling using agent-based techniques. Ultimately, the research aims to fill the gaps in COVID-19 exposure models of lacking socioeconomic and territorial vulnerability or including communities and individuals as active agents in response efforts. The project outlines the differences in vulnerability from social and spatial factors and provides geographic science with an integrated authoritative, open and volunteered information toolbox. It also empowers society for decision-making on the fight against present and future pandemics, considering spatial features and behavior in the Global South.
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Contact:
Dr. Juan Miguel Rodriguez Lopez
Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC)
Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN)
Cluster of Excellence 'Climate, Climatic Change, and Society' (CLICCS)
Institute of Geography, Universität Hamburg
Grindelberg 5-7, 20144 Hamburg, Germany
miguel.rodriguez@uni-hamburg.de