Use case: Covid-19 map in Italy
Use of tools for reading and geolocation of Open Data for the management of the emergency due to the spread of Coronavirus in Italy by the Civil Protection
Organizations involved
OnData – Association for the promotion of transparency and data culture through digital skills and investigative journalism (solution provider) and Department of Civil Protection – Presidency of the Council of Ministers (user institution and public service provider)
Objectives obtained
The Department of Civil Protection, in order to guarantee an increasingly effective and transparent institutional communication, it has created an interactive map for displaying the situation relating to health monitoring on Coronavirus in Italy. It is a new tool that adds to the press releases and press conferences that the Department of Civil Protection constantly guarantees, starting from the declaration of the state of emergency for Covid-19.
The challenge
The Department of Civil Protection – Presidency of the Council of Ministers needed the implementation of a map on the model of the global one created by John Hopkins University, to promptly inform citizens on the management of the emergency due to the spread of Coronavirus in Italy.
This map had to be based on the reading and geolocation of a precise, aggregate and reliable set of Open Data, made available under the transparency regime by the Public Administrations involved, to obtain an effective and easy visualization; the instrument had to be accessible both from PC / desktop and from mobile devices / smartphones.
The solution
From 7 March 2020, through the Department website, it is possible to consult a geographical map of Italy and identify cases of infection, indicated with a red dot.
The display of the number of infections can be done with a detail that goes from the regional level to the individual province.
Above are the total number of people currently positive, the number of those recovered, that of the deceased (awaiting confirmation from the Istituto Superiore di Sanità) and the total number of cases registered.
On the right two graphs show the national trend and the new positive data referring to the previous days.
Users can download the data – provided by the Ministry of Health – in an open format, accompanied by a CC-BY license and metadata, in accordance with the provisions of the Digital Administration Code.
The web application was created in collaboration with OnData using ESRI’s ArcGIS Online platform and is available in two versions: mobile and desktop.
The data are updated daily at 6pm, at the same time as the press conference that is transmitted through the social channels of the Department of Civil Protection.