Observing Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic using Worldwide Network Cameras
Isha Ghodgaonkar, Abhinav Goel, Fischer Bordwell, Caleb Tung, Sara, Aghajanzadeh, Noah Curran, Ryan Chen, Kaiwen Yu, Sneha Mahapatra, Vishnu, Banna, Gore Kao, Kate Lee, Xiao Hu, Nick Eliopolous, Akhil Chinnakotla,, Damini Rijhwani, Ashley Kim, Aditya Chakraborty

TL;DR
This paper demonstrates how worldwide network cameras can be used to safely observe and analyze public responses to COVID-19 policies in real-time, providing a novel method for pandemic monitoring.
Contribution
It introduces a large-scale approach using internet-connected cameras to monitor societal responses during COVID-19, with new tools for data collection and analysis.
Findings
Over 30,000 cameras identified in 110 countries
Methods for discovering and managing camera data developed
Preliminary analysis shows potential for pandemic response monitoring
Abstract
COVID-19 has resulted in a worldwide pandemic, leading to "lockdown" policies and social distancing. The pandemic has profoundly changed the world. Traditional methods for observing these historical events are difficult because sending reporters to areas with many infected people can put the reporters' lives in danger. New technologies are needed for safely observing responses to these policies. This paper reports using thousands of network cameras deployed worldwide for the purpose of witnessing activities in response to the policies. The network cameras can continuously provide real-time visual data (image and video) without human efforts. Thus, network cameras can be utilized to observe activities without risking the lives of reporters. This paper describes a project that uses network cameras to observe responses to governments' policies during the COVID-19 pandemic (March to April…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsAnomaly Detection Techniques and Applications · COVID-19 epidemiological studies · COVID-19 diagnosis using AI
