An interactive dashboard, created by researchers at Princeton University displays daily district-level data on the spread of COVID-19 across India. The interface lets users explore and visualize the daily infection and mortality rates and compare such data across villages, towns and cities.

The dashboard was developed by Bhartendu Pandey and Jianyu Gu, postdoctoral researchers in the Sustainable Urban Systems Lab. Pandey and Gu were advised by Anu Ramaswami, the Sanjay Swani ‘87 Professor of India Studies, professor of civil and environmental engineering, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS), and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, and director of the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India.

“District-level data in India is critical because COVID-19 is evolving in different ways across cities, towns and villages, both spatially and temporally,” Ramaswami said. “Underlying factors for coronavirus spread and mitigation vary in complex ways that nationally aggregated data cannot reveal.”        

The dashboard has three objectives: to help visualize the severity and progression of COVID-19 across 640+ districts in India; to create open-source data to explore COVID-19’s complex interactions with social, environmental and infrastructural determinants of health; and to invite collaboration that contributes additional crowd-sourced information that may lead to a better understanding of COVID-19 in urban and rural areas.

“This map features additional data on co-morbidities and existing disease burden, showing how coronavirus cases overlap with other public health challenges,” said Pandey said. Pandey and Gu will add data about infrastructure to highlight the extent to which COVID-19 is associated with existing health and infrastructure disparities in India.

“CGI’s effort to create a collaborative dashboard is timely and an important vehicle to facilitate information sharing and research on COVID-19 in India at this critical juncture,” said David Jarvis, deputy director of PIIRS.

The map is updated daily. The data used to create this dashboard is drawn from public sources including COVID19India.org  and Landscan. (Users should note data from external sources are not verified by Princeton University, the Chadha Center, or the Sustainable Urban Systems Lab. For further questions or suggestions, please email [email protected].)