The goal on this project is to raise awareness on the evolution of COVID. The idea is to associate a visualization that shows data relevant to the public with a didactic text on why such evolution is expected. A forecasting model will be developed.

This web-based visualization (https://covid19-dash.github.io/) is meant to help someone wanting to see or show what is a likely evolution of the situation for their local environment. The ultimate goal is to influence individual behavior, to decrease the spread.

So, the goal is to reach the general public, not experts familiar with graphs and numbers.

To predictions and the associated text should be trustworthy, hence be solid and sober, rather than fancy and dramatic. We would like this to be approved by people with the relevant expertise.

COVID-19 is a serious issue and our visualization and data analysis needs to be thought through serious. The following is a good read: https://medium.com/nightingale/ten-considerations-before-you-create-another-chart-about-covid-19-27d3bd691be8

The application is built with a local dash app (https://plot.ly/dash/) for development. Then a Makefile is used to turn this in a static website.

To launch the Dash app:

python3 app.py

then visit http://127.0.0.1:8050 with your browser

See the Makefile.