Visual Data Analysis and Simulation Prediction for COVID-19

The COVID-19 (formerly, 2019-nCoV) epidemic has become a global healthemergency, as such, WHO declared PHEIC. China has taken the most hit since theoutbreak of the virus, which could be dated as far back as late November bysome experts. It was not until January 23rd that the Wuhan government finallyrecognized the severity of the epidemic and took a drastic measure to curtainthe virus spread by closing down all transportation connecting the outsideworld. In this study, we seek to answer a few questions: How did the virus getspread from the epicenter Wuhan city to the rest of the country? To what extentdid the measures, such as, city closure and community quarantine, helpcontrolling the situation? More importantly, can we forecast any significantfuture development of the event had some of the conditions changed? Bycollecting and visualizing publicly available data, we first show patterns andcharacteristics of the epidemic development; we then employ a mathematicalmodel of disease transmission dynamics to evaluate the effectiveness of someepidemic control measures, and more importantly, to offer a few tips onpreventive measures.