Tag: COVID-19

Kenneth Field has made no bones about his frustration with maps of the COVID-19 outbreak, many of which have presented data in ways that are at best misleading. A simple choropleth map isn’t always simple. He’s put his thoughts on what not to do, and what to do instead, in this Twitter thread, and followed that up with this article on the ArcGIS blog.

We live in an amazing time as far as cartography is concerned. Technology allows, and actively supports rapid, democratized mapping. Data, compiled and published in near real-time (if not actual real-time) encourages people to get their hands dirty to see what they can make. Media outlets all rush to provide their audience with fast, visible content. Social media drives sharing of these maps at a breathtaking pace. When you throw in a developing human health story the ingredients are ripe for maps to take centre stage, as they have become with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak. Let’s take a look at how maps can help shape the narrative and, as concern (fear?) grows, how to map the data responsibly.

CityLab’s Marie Patino looks at some of the maps tracking the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus and from there pivots to some of the ways we’ve tracked disease outbreaks and epidemics in the past. Examples can be found as far back as the 17th century—long before John Snow’s cholera map, in other words.

Related reading: Tom Koch’s Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground (University of Chicago Press, 2011) and Cartographies of Disease (Esri Press, 2nd ed 2016), Sandra Hempel’s Atlas of Disease (White Lion, 2018) and, of course, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson (2006).