How the pandemic has been the catalyst for spatial innovation

Today, geospatial technology or geographic information systems (GIS) has become an indispensable tool in many fields: agriculture and aviation, construction and trade, climate research and law enforcement – the list goes on

According to ResearchAndMarkets research, the global geospatial solutions market is expected to grow dynamically over the next five years and reach US$549.1 billion by 2025. However, in the face of a global health emergency, several niche geospatial solutions as well as mobile health app developers have refocused on fighting the virus.

Innovative geospatial tech applications during the pandemic

geospatial analysis

As governments began to emphasize data-driven decision-making to efficiently combat the transmission and spread of COVID-19 in their countries, geospatial analysis, a method that brings together spatial, demographic, and statistical data, proved indispensable.

A plethora of dashboards and maps available today provide agencies with the granular, real-time dynamics of COVID-19 cases, deaths, recoveries, and hospitalizations on a local and global scale. By linking this information to relevant demographics, such as population age, financial status, housing conditions, activity patterns and self-reported symptoms, officials gain a contextual view of the region and can easily pinpoint the areas most at risk, or the location of the disease.

Geospatial analysis used by researchers from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid helped identify the Spanish areas most in need of protective measures against the COVID-19 outbreak.

Geospatial AI

From the very beginning, artificial intelligence has become a strategic ally in humanity’s fight against the coronavirus. Since January, several proprietary algorithms have been scanning health reports, news, airline travel information and social media, giving a relatively accurate prediction of the spread of the virus. Some systems also consider geospatial data from public dashboards in their calculations, but for now there are some solutions that emphasize GIS to make COVID-19 predictions.

One example is BlackSky’s state-of-the-art geospatial platform Spectra in Seattle. The system applies AI to analyze imagery from satellite and commercial surveillance systems and identifies early signs of social and economic recovery in the region, taking into account the number of vehicles on the roads and planes at the airport, along with other telltale signs of a revival Activities that could come from GIS data.

Other notable geo-AI projects are currently being developed by Penn State University’s geography research group. Their predictive modeling-based solution will merge satellite imagery, infrared energy, radio frequency emissions, and population density data with population movement patterns, contact rates, and transmission dynamics to accurately predict potential COVID-19 outbreak zones. Another system this team is building will assess Pennsylvania’s food and environmental security during and after the pandemic and predict food system risks.

Geospatial technology and drones

As high-resolution and up-to-date spatial imagery has become a priority in all geospatial application domains, this domain has witnessed supercharged data collection processes using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones. Nimble, powerful and budget-friendly, they have been increasingly used for geo-mapping in recent years. Just as drones changed the game for GIS, geospatial technology is now meeting the needs of agencies using UAVs in their fight against the virus.
Drone application methods vary from country to country. In Italy and Saudi Arabia, drones are taking citizens’ body temperatures, while the UK, Ghana and Chile are using them to deliver supplies, protective equipment and tests to remote areas. Finally, health authorities in China, India and Indonesia deployed UAVs to disinfect the hardest-hit public areas.
None of these efforts would have been as effective if agencies had not relied on GIS. Geospatial data not only help to correctly identify badly affected, inaccessible or endangered areas, but also help to create a highly detailed map of settlements and natural landscapes.

The controversies

Since the beginning of the pandemic, societies and organizations have raised concerns about solutions that access and record users’ geolocation data, calling them an emerging human rights threat.

For one, GPS location data, even when carefully anonymized, can be used to reveal sensitive details about an individual’s identity, behavior, or activities to the general public. In this way, the South Korean movement tracking and recording system has even allowed netizens to expose a cheating couple.

Another concern raised about coronavirus apps is their lack of transparency. Few countries have released the source code of their contact tracing and geofencing solutions, without which it is impossible to know for sure whether location data is being collected, used, stored and destroyed in the way the developers claim. Additionally, some tracing apps require users to enter their personal information, including home address and phone number, which the official line says will only be used to contact the infected individual.

To provide an objective assessment of today’s contact tracing technology, MIT Technology Review created the COVID Tracing Tracker project. The team reviewed 25 government-run coronavirus tracking apps from around the world, focusing on their policies on the use of personal information and location tracking technology. As a result, few solutions scored highly, while most apps uncovered serious privacy and transparency issues. It is noteworthy that some GPS-based apps were found to be outright privacy-friendly, just as some of the apps using the highly privileged Google/Apple protocol were found to be invasive and insecure.

MIT’s unbiased review casts reasonable doubt on the notion that Bluetooth is a panacea for privacy breaches and government incursions in contact-tracing software. Currently, it is becoming increasingly clear that the problem may not lie in the overexposure of geospatial data, but rather in the applications that use them and the intentions of those who develop them.

Geospatial technology in the fight against COVID-19

Although the use of geospatial technology has proven effective in the fight against the virus, the technology has met with opposition from the public and from organizations dealing with the potential human rights abuse. It is feared that the pandemic will leave some governments with massive databases of personal records or even mature technology for ubiquitous surveillance of their citizens.

Most European countries, aware of these implications, shied away from GPS contact tracing and waited for more privacy-preserving protocols to be developed. But as it turns out, the fault may not lie in geospatial technology itself. Still, this controversy caused some countries to move away from GIS-based solutions and opt for contact-tracing logs with a dedicated privacy-centric design.

This piece was written and provided by Liza Dzhezhora, Healthcare IT Analyst at Itransition