Team Name

Citizen Scientists

Team Members

Project Description

Our solution leverages the power of Citizen Science by providing a counting tool to shed light on mask-wearing compliance across Victoria. The data collected will populate a heat map visualization in real-time, within postcode boundaries. This will allow us to demonstrate the proportion of those wearing masks compared to the total individuals observed within all postcodes.

Data Story

GovHack 2020 - Citizen Science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDHmGwBYiac&feature=youtu.be

Introduction

Victoria is currently in the middle of their second lockdown and to control the spread of coronavirus, for the first time in history, wearing face coverings is now mandatory for all of Victoria. We spoke to some people in Melbourne, and they’ve seen a lot of people not doing the right thing. There are even anti-mask protestors. Our problem statement is, how do we measure the level of compliance around wearing masks, so that messages provided by the government is effective in keeping people vigilant and doing their part to flatten the curve?
Our solution leverages the power of Citizen Science by providing a counting tool to measure mask-wearing compliance across Victoria.

The MaskCount App

We’ve created a simple citizen science app called MaskCount where Australians can opt in to help collect data and contribute to science and our understanding of what is happening in Victoria. Volunteers will go outside within restrictions, count the number of mask-wearers and non-mask wearers, from as little as 10 minutes to an hour (but safely of course) and help collect these numbers based on location and time.

The Data - Dashboard

The data collected will populate a heat map visualization in real-time. Phone GPS coordinates will be matched to postcode boundaries (https://discover.data.vic.gov.au/dataset/vicmap-admin) This will allow us to demonstrate the proportion of those wearing masks compared to the total individuals observed within all postcodes.

Impact

Our citizen science app and the data collected will help scientists in the future understand the impact of a modern pandemic and unprecedented restrictions on Australians. It will also assist government in allocating monitoring/surveillance resources to control the spread

Technologies used

• Python
• React native
• Tableau
• Figma
• MongoDB

Project Repositories

• [mobile-application] https://github.com/DVacirca/govhack_citizen_science
• [app services] https://github.com/willymacoy/govhack2020
• [data visualisation] https://github.com/Tiantong-W/GovHack-CitizenScience

Team Members

Dante Vacirca
Mike Edmonds
Claudia Wang
Tri Huynh
Peggy Wei