The latest UK and international data on COVID-19 can be analysed with a web-based dashboard created by Lancaster University.

Items include animated representations of transmission at different spatial scales through time, along with numbers of tests performed, and cases identified, in the UK.

The site downloads daily updates from two of the most relevant and widely cited datasets from Johns Hopkins University and Public Health England.

Simon Alderton of CHICAS at Lancaster Medical School created the framework with Gwen Palmer from the Frazer-Nash Consultancy.

“As a data visualisation tool, the key for us was to build a platform where data could be viewed at a range of spatio-temporal scales. For example, within the same site, you can view an animation of outbreak progression over a week at the global scale, or since February in the Lancaster area, and many combinations in-between.

“We are adding new features all the time, including prevalence estimates between countries to allow direct comparison between nations, and information relating to the volume and result of testing being conducted in the UK each day.”

Future goals include the incorporation of simple simulations which visitors can run themselves, to investigate the implications of, for example, social distancing measures.

Simon said: “The site came about as a result of my interest in computational spatial epidemiology. Having geography as a first degree, I noticed that the majority of the growing number of data representations on the internet plotted data through time or space, and I wanted to do both.”