COVID-19 data sources: evaluation of map applications and analysis of behavior changes in Europe’s population

Abstract

Due to the current situation, and preventive measures taken to tackle COVID-19, it is crucial to keep society well-informed. Besides media and official news, that often include tabular data, it has also become a new standard for information sources to incorporate a map application or geovisualization. This paper offers a comprehensive and systematic overview describing the most prominent and useful map applications and map visualizations. News outlets should place the same importance on data analysis and interpretation as they place on data visualization. This paper emphasizes the role of geospatial data and analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic and aims to provide insights into the topic in order to better understand the consequences caused by the disease. Specifically, the paper deals with the COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports dataset, offering unique information about changes in human activity due to the pandemic. We show how this dataset can be utilized in terms of geovisual analytics and clustering in order to reveal the spatial pattern of such changes in human behavior.