Pandemic Data for Planners — Blogs

As many cities and coun­tries around the world emerg­ing from COVID-19 lock­downs, city plan­ners are think­ing strate­gi­cal­ly about mov­ing ahead with projects stay­ing mind­ful of the fac­tors that could pro­mote or harm pub­lic health.

Mak­ing progress in those aims requires stay­ing abreast of trends and respond­ing accord­ing­ly, and recent­ly col­lect­ed pandem­ic can shape the future of cities.

Showing How the Coronavirus Impacts Counties, Cities and States

Com­par­ing how dif­fer­ent places fared dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic could encour­age city plan­ners to dig deep­er and exam­ine the pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive fac­tors that caused such out­comes. Some local author­i­ties are mak­ing this pub­licly avail­able to help res­i­dents and oth­ers stay informed as the pan­dem­ic con­tin­ues.

Boston has a COVID-19 Case Track­er that shows nation­al , along with sta­tis­tics for Mass­a­chu­setts and the city. data set for Boston goes into even more detail by show­ing the break­down of cas­es by coun­ty, plus the state’s infor­ma­tion about tests per­formed and pos­i­tive results.

The Har­vard Data­verse also offers a col­lec­tion of COVID-19 data for 926 met­ro­pol­i­tan areas in the Unit­ed States. The files show dai­ly cas­es, but they require down­load­ing the con­tent and open­ing it in com­pat­i­ble soft­ware rather than work­ing with an inter­ac­tive map.

Main­tain­ing read­i­ly avail­able data will undoubt­ed­ly remain a chal­lenge mov­ing for­ward. If the par­ties that man­age the infor­ma­tion keep it seg­ment­ed between depart­ments or require a per­son to have access priv­i­leges, those short­com­ings could make it more for plan­ners and oth­er con­cerned pro­fes­sion­als to see the infor­ma­tion and learn from what it shows.

Highlighting the Communities Most at Risk for Coronavirus Infections

Effec­tive city plan­ning also requires pin­point­ing the high­est com­mu­ni­ty risks for ill­ness out­breaks and deter­min­ing how to reduce the threats. For exam­ple, if an area has a high per­cent­age of vul­ner­a­ble res­i­dents and a below-aver­age num­ber of health clin­ics, those places could even­tu­al­ly become sick­ness hotspots.

City plan­ners can inter­vene in sev­er­al pro­duc­tive ways. They might increase pub­lic tran­sit routes to bet­ter serve health facil­i­ties or invest in paths that help peo­ple safe­ly reach clin­ics by bik­ing or walk­ing. They can also pay atten­tion to fac­tors like air qual­i­ty that could exac­er­bate or improve a per­son­’s med­ical con­di­tions.

The Urban Health Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty Index is a map-based tool that iden­ti­fies the com­mu­ni­ties with high­er-than-aver­age risks of coro­n­avirus infec­tions. It also shows relat­ed data, such as the area’s access to health care. Peo­ple can access a break­down of the con­di­tions in each city and refer to col­or-cod­ing that iden­ti­fies the over­all dan­ger lev­el.

This pan­dem­ic data set also includes infor­ma­tion about test­ing. Despite being spe­cif­ic to COVID-19, it could prove valu­able for antic­i­pat­ing future ill­ness out­breaks and show­ing local where to allo­cate more fund­ing and oth­er resources. For such an approach to work well, the respon­si­ble enti­ties must be will­ing to work togeth­er and have for­ward-think­ing mind­sets.

Assessing and Improving Economic Conditions

Many peo­ple are focused on remov­ing COVID-19 restric­tions to get the econ­o­my back on track. Invest­ing in new build­ings, struc­tur­al enhance­ments, and infra­struc­ture upgrades could all play cru­cial roles in help­ing the econ­o­my begin to flour­ish again.

A con­struc­tion com­pa­ny called Pro­core pub­lish­es ongo­ing coro­n­avirus data relat­ed to its indus­try. It shows changes in job­site activ­i­ty and work­er hours across the state. Col­ors draw atten­tion to the hard­est-hit areas.

Many ana­lysts are focus­ing on COVID-19-relat­ed risks now, and that’s valid. They must not over­look the oth­er, less­er-con­sid­ered risks fac­ing con­struc­tion work­ers, though. For exam­ple, sta­tis­tics from 2004–2016 indi­cat­ed there were over 53,000 cas­es of insect-borne dis­eases dur­ing each year of that span. Stings and bites can result in time away from work or even fatal­i­ties.

Con­struc­tion site activ­i­ty is but one fac­tor that could spur the econ­o­my. City plan­ners should also look at oth­er eco­nom­ic data com­pi­la­tions to accu­rate­ly gauge the con­di­tions in their areas or the coun­try.

The Fed­er­al Reserve Bank of St. Louis offers a huge col­lec­tion of graphs spe­cif­ic to the U.S. econ­o­my. Although many have sta­tis­tics tak­en from before the time when peo­ple start­ed pri­or­i­tiz­ing pan­dem­ic data, con­tent on the page men­tions that the goal is to show the impact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Plan­ners can use that infor­ma­tion to guide their deci­sions about new projects that could help the econ­o­my.

The U.S. Bureau also has a ded­i­cat­ed page of data con­cern­ing how the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic affects sec­tors and house­holds. One sec­tion pro­files how the virus impacts small busi­ness­es. Once city plan­ners gain an all-encom­pass­ing pic­ture of cur­rent and future eco­nom­ic aspects, they’ll be well informed to make deci­sions that have pos­i­tive and notice­able influ­ences on their economies.

Staying Informed About Policy Decisions

City plan­ners can also learn from the choic­es oth­er pro­fes­sion­als make dur­ing health crises. The coro­n­avirus is the threat most peo­ple pri­mar­i­ly focus on now, but it cer­tain­ly won’t be the health chal­lenge to affect soci­ety. Under­stand­ing how local and region­al author­i­ties act­ed most recent­ly could impact future poli­cies. The covid19policytrackers con­tains a mas­sive col­lec­tion of coro­n­avirus data illu­mi­nat­ing con­clu­sions made about school clo­sures, move­ment restric­tions, pub­lic aware­ness cam­paigns, emer­gency dec­la­ra­tions, and var­i­ous oth­er con­tain­ment mea­sures.

Main­tain­ing a high aware­ness of these out­comes helps city plan­ners oper­ate in ways that take upcom­ing deci­sions into account. They can’t pre­dict the future, but they can look at how gov­ern­ments respond­ed to the coro­n­avirus out­break and eval­u­ate how to make cities safe and resilient places dur­ing such health cat­a­stro­phes.

Using Pandemic Data for Better Planning Productivity

Peo­ple often describe the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as an unprece­dent­ed sit­u­a­tion, and indeed, some indi­vid­u­als have nev­er lived through any­thing like it. Search­ing for trends and adapt­ing meth­ods to fit the “new nor­mal” the coro­n­avirus cre­at­ed could help urban plan­ning pro­fes­sion­als make more effec­tive deci­sions dur­ing this pan­dem­ic and future health threats.

Study­ing the hard sta­tis­tics col­lect­ed over the past sev­er­al months vast­ly min­i­mizes guess­work. It allows plan­ners to make con­fi­dent, informed deci­sions based on his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion.

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