Visualising spatio-temporal health data: the importance of capturing the 4th dimension

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Dynamic Health Atlas, a web-based visualization tool that effectively displays the spatial and temporal evolution of health data, including uncertainty, to aid decision-making during health crises.

Contribution

It presents a novel interactive web app for visualizing spatio-temporal health data with uncertainty, demonstrated through two UK case studies on disease outbreaks.

Findings

Effective visualization of disease spread over space and time.

Ability to incorporate and display data uncertainty.

Demonstrated usefulness in real-world health scenarios.

Abstract

Confronted by a rapidly evolving health threat, such as an infectious disease outbreak, it is essential that decision-makers are able to comprehend the complex dynamics not just in space but also in the 4th dimension, time. In this paper this is addressed by a novel visualisation tool, referred to as the Dynamic Health Atlas web app, which is designed specifically for displaying the spatial evolution of data over time while simultaneously acknowledging its uncertainty. It is an interactive and open-source web app, coded predominantly in JavaScript, in which the geospatial and temporal data are displayed side-by-side. The first of two case studies of this visualisation tool relates to an outbreak of canine gastroenteric disease in the United Kingdom, where many veterinary practices experienced an unusually high case incidence. The second study concerns the predicted COVID-19 reproduction number along with incidence and prevalence forecasts in each local authority district in the United Kingdom. These studies demonstrate the effectiveness of the Dynamic Health Atlas web app at conveying geospatial and temporal dynamics along with their corresponding uncertainties.