From 5Vs to 6Cs: Operationalizing Epidemic Data Management with COVID-19 Surveillance

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the forefront an unprecedented need for experts, as well as citizens, to visualize spatio-temporal disease surveillance data. Web application dashboards were quickly developed to fill t his g ap, b ut a ll of these dashboards supported a particular niche view of the pandemic (ie, current status or specific r egions). I n t his paper, we describe our work developing our COVID-19 Surveillance Dashboard, which offers a unique view of the pandemic while also allowing users to focus on the details that interest them. From the beginning, our goal was to provide a simple visual tool for comparing, organizing, and tracking near-real-time surveillance data as the pandemic progresses. In developing this dashboard, we also identified 6 key metrics which we propose as a standard for the design and evaluation of real-time epidemic science dashboards. Our dashboard was one of the first released to the public, and continues to be actively visited. Our own group uses it to support federal, state and local public health authorities, and it is used by individuals worldwide to track the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic, build their own dashboards, and support their organizations as they plan their responses to the pandemic.