Bloomberg releases COVID-19 data metrics for cities

Bloomberg Philanthropies has released a suite of metrics to help city leaders make data-driven decisions about the next steps for COVID-19 recovery.

The COVID-19 Management Metrics for Cities were developed by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and What Works Cities, Bloomberg’s city data initiative, to help cities analyse data in seven key areas.

These are: status of local infection rate; capacity of the healthcare system; status of testing and contact tracing system; levels of compliance with public health safety measures; the protection and preparedness of emergency workers, as well as congregate facilities such as nursing homes and prisons; and readiness levels for business reopening.

Framework

“Data is a vital tool to help city leaders respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as safely and equitably as possible,” said Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies, and former Mayor of New York. “As mayors put together their plans to reopen and revive their local economies, the set of metrics we’ve developed in partnership with Johns Hopkins will allow them to focus their resources on communities in need – reducing health disparities and saving lives.”

The tools are the latest output from the Bloomberg Philanthropies COVID-19 Local Response Initiative. The programme includes technical assistance and training from What Works Cities to distil and analyse data by race, gender, age, neighbourhood or zip code, census tract and income level, to understand the impact of COVID-19 on different populations and guide resource allocation.

“Data should inform action to contain the pandemic,” said Dr Joshua Sharfstein, MD, the Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement for the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Bloomberg American Health Initiative. “These metrics offer a framework for mayors to use data to guide critical decisions in the weeks and months ahead.”

COVID-19: Data in action

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) gathered at a recent Cities Today Institute digital roundtable noted the importance of data visualisation and analysis during the pandemic – both for residents and decision-makers within the city. Several also highlighted key obstacles to achieving data’s full potential and said these issues will need to be addressed to boost future resilience.

Kimberly W. LaGrue, Chief Information Officer, City of New Orleans, shared how the Mayor’s Office set up a data ‘war room’ for the pandemic and used existing tools such as Power BI to create dashboards which track trends and criteria for easing restrictions.

The City of Philadelphia’s long history of using geographic information system (GIS) data has also proved central to its COVID-19 response, and it is now bringing in advanced real-time mobility and point-of-sale data to support economic recovery.

However, despite the data benefits many cities say they are seeing during the coronavirus crisis, several roundtable delegates – particularly those from smaller municipalities – also reported that they have faced challenges with accessing the city-specific data they need from state governments. They highlighted a critical need for new agreements and application programming interfaces (APIs) to support better data-sharing at a city, state and national level, as well as with the private sector.