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  Data map showing cases as well as health policies in each state

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  Chart displaying average new daily cases per 1 million for each policy

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  Sample data table showing policies implemented in each state

Crisis Response Mapping

Message

Provide Clarity, Prevent Confusion, and Proceed Forward

Background

The United States of America has been combating the COVID-19 pandemic for months. With this crisis, new policies and procedures have been enacted to help slow the spread of the virus. This site was built at during COVID HealthHack 1 and originally tasked to track the spread of the disease and the emerging policies to follow. But because the US plans on reopening in the near future, the task of the site was broadened to not only show the trends of the virus spread between the states but also how policies implemented within each state affected the trends of the disease.

Objective

The essence of our project is to provide a better, dynamic map and trends dashboard for the spread of the virus, as well as the policies enacted for preventative measures. Our goal is to provide clarity and awareness to the ongoing pandemic as the focus shifts to reopening. Ultimately, we aim to assist policymakers, as well as the public, in what is being done to stop the pandemic.

Target Audience

• Policymakers - Create a tool they can use to see other state's policies and procedures, and how well those states are doing in terms of infection
• Citizens - An accessible database to see how their state is fairing against the virus, as well as what policies the state has enacted to protect them.

How We Built It

For this site we used the python Flask micro web framework as the backbone because it is lightweight and easy to use, perfect for our website and hackathons in general. The site itself is built with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with most of the heavy lifting happening behind the scenes in Python. In order to use the KFF spreadsheet database we used the google sheets API and to use JHU's Github csv repo database we used the python Pandas module. The data is then processed and displayed on the website using the google maps and google sheets API's. The site is hosted using Heroku and Gunicorn.

Challenges We Ran Into

We ran into challenges in terms of skillset and utilization of git but overcame that by persistence and learning from web sources.

What We Learned

With this project, we learned how to use Google APIs and furthered our programming skills. The project also revealed how rewarding it is to work on a project that matters and that can help people during this difficult time.

What's Next for Crisis Response Mapping

We plan on keeping the website up to date and to improve the site through user input. The repo is completely open to the public so any and all pull requests or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Built With

• beautiful-soup
• css
• flask
• git
• google-chart
• google-maps
• google-spreadsheets
• heroku
• html
• javascript
• python
• requests