Abstract

I plan on pursuing a public health project utilizing GIS and spatial data science, specifically investigating the spatial-temporal analysis of COVID-19 in Latin America and Spain and Portugal in Europe located at country level. This will be achieved by using daily and cumulative case data from the WHO (World Health Organization) and air quality data from the World Air Quality Index Project 2020 data. The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most major public health concerns in over 100 years. Since late 2019, there have been over 700 million cases and almost 7 million deaths. Every country has handled the pandemic differently. Some have had the ability to remain stable, while others have struggled to return to normalcy. Latin America and Europe have had very different experiences regarding the pandemic. Due to cultural similarities, this study involves the comparison of Latin America and European countries such as Spain and Portugal during the time period of March 2020 through July 2021. This time period was chosen because there was a lot of uncertainty during this time with a lot of new patterns emerging regarding how to deal with the pandemic. This study is solely focused on the spatial-temporal patterns of COVID-19 infections among the select countries, correlation between lockdowns, vaccination, infections, and correlation between infection and air quality. This in-depth analysis will directly benefit a deeper understanding of the dynamic nature of this ongoing pandemic and inform more effective and efficient public health policies and actions at varying spatial scales. A better understanding will allow society as a whole to learn from their mistakes and be better prepared for another possible public health crisis in the future.