The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked thousands of new large-scale data projects globally. These COVID data infrastructures are essential: they enable the public, policymakers, public health officials, and others to see and comprehend particular aspects of the global health crisis. This research compares COVID data infrastructures in the U.S. and India, countries that share extremely high COVID infection rates as well as electoral democracy that encourages transparency; 'Data for Social Good' rhetoric; and large IT workforces. The project seeks to reveal how project leaders and contributors confront and manage the disruptions, hardships, and conflicts created by the pandemic. Working across different geographies and institutional settings, the research project will highlight how the pandemic impacts different communities in different ways. The research project will provide policymakers, technologists, and other leaders with insights and recommendations on how to improve the creation and maintenance of emergency data infrastructures. By understanding the dynamics of current COVID data infrastructures, we can be better prepared for the next emergency.
This RAPID research project investigates the creation, maintenance, and real-time transformation of novel critical data infrastructures. It uncovers the debates, conflicts, orderings, and important decisions that shape and define COVID data-tracker systems. At a time when the pandemic is disrupting ongoing research across the globe, these data-trackers can provide insights into how to create and maintain resilient and sustainable research-enabling infrastructure under conditions of significant stress. This RAPID project uses cross-national comparative analysis of public COVID data projects in the U.S. and India in order to identify the key factors that enable data infrastructures to endure the social and material disruptions associated with the pandemic. The project’s cross-national and comparative research design ensures that research findings are generalizable. COVID data infrastructures are dynamic: the information, practices, tools, and collaborators that populate these systems constantly evolve. Often, the important adaptations that shape critical data infrastructures are not easily preserved using current web archiving and cumulative public data preservation methods. Additionally, the project’s research design will capture this otherwise ephemeral data--allowing the project to analyze and interpret how these infrastructures are created and maintained under adverse conditions. The project is informed by and will contribute to the scholarly literature on ethnographies of technology development, infrastructure studies, and crisis informatics. Research findings will support concrete recommendations for how these and future data infrastructure can be made (1) sustainable; (2) accountable to different publics; and (3) improved in order to help save lives.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
