China News Agency, Beijing, April 9 Question: The world ’s most reliable epidemic situation map has been developed for Chinese students studying abroad: Thanks to China ’s standardized data
Author Cheng Yu Ma Xiuxiu
"In the development of this epidemic, China has done a good job of collecting and collating data." Du Hongru said that the website can be produced quickly, and we need to thank China for its early and standardized data.
Du Hongru is a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University. With the spread of the New Coronary Pneumonia epidemic worldwide, the epidemic data and related maps monitored by Johns Hopkins University were cited by mainstream media and health departments in many countries when they released the data.
The map tracks and displays real-time dynamic data of the epidemic situation in various countries. Up to now, the total number of visits to the epidemic map website has reached 16 billion, with an average daily visit of 1 billion. The map is from the hands of two Chinese doctoral students at Johns Hopkins University and their mentor Lauren Gardner. Du Hongru and Dong Ensheng are both PhD students in the system science and engineering center of the university. Recently, the two of them accepted an online interview.
According to reports, because of previous experience in similar projects, the first version of the epidemic map was produced in the evening of January 21 in just 8 hours. "One is because we are all Chinese, and we are more worried and concerned about the epidemic in our hometown." Dong Ensheng said, on the other hand, it originated from professional interest and hopes to record the disease from "birth" to being defeated by humans through data collection. process.
At first, the map data was completely manually organized by Dong Ensheng, and was updated up to 4 to 5 times a day; later, with the efforts of the R & D team, the data has been gradually updated automatically every 20 minutes, supplemented by manual review, on the basis of ensuring accuracy Improve data timeliness.
Du Hongru said that they wrote a program to collect data from various data sources, and then put it into a unified format and update it to the server.
"At the same time as updating the program, we also left a piece of manual processing in the program." Du Hongru said, anywhere, if the cumulative deaths or cumulative diagnoses decline, this is abnormal and they will need to be checked manually. Make sure the data is accurate.
In order to continuously improve the visualization effect, the research and development team has also revised the data map several times, and each annotation fully takes into account the user experience.
"High-quality data provides the scientific research team with a basis for research and analysis, as well as help in making relevant decisions." Dong Ensheng said that in the next step, they will enrich the map data indicators and display the global epidemic situation more intuitively and comprehensively. "I also hope that all countries in the world will further strengthen cooperation and control the spread of the epidemic as soon as possible."
Du Hongru believes that international cooperation is very important, and the data should be made more open, transparent, accurate, and more convenient for the collection and collation of scientific research institutions, so as to make a more important contribution to the control of the development of the epidemic. (Finish)