WIU website monitoring reported cases of COVID-19

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 continues to rise, Western Illinois University has a map available for people who want to monitor where the outbreaks have been reported.

The university’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Geographic Information Sciences have assembled a map that monitors the state’s outbreak of the Coronavirus, highlighting counties were it has been reported as well as the number of cases.

Chad Sperry is the Director of WIU’s GIS Center and President of Illinois GIS Association (ILGISA) and he says there wasn’t an interactive map to monitor the Coronavirus outbreak in the state, which this map fulfills those needs.

“And one of the things that came to our attention was that there was not a good interactive viewer specifically for the State of Illinois. Johns Hopkins University had put out an interactive viewer for the world and there were others for the nation but nothing specifically for Illinois. So, we wanted to get into that granular data of showing what’s happening on the county level.”

Additionally, Sperry says that the map also shows cases of counties just outside of the Illinois border.

“So, we thought it’s not just isolated to Illinois, it’s a global pandemic, and especially being in western Illinois — closer to the rivers — it’s helpful to us and to anyone who uses the tools to see what’s going on over there in eastern Iowa and northeast Missouri. So, that was kind of the basis and logic for what we did.”

The map gets updated through official reports from the Illinois Department of Public Health and other agencies.

Sperry says that the GIS Center is well-equipped to update the map despite the need for social distancing and self-isolation.

The map can be found here.

Recommended Posts

Loading...