Risk assessment to curb COVID-19 contagion: A preliminary study using remote sensing and GIS

Abstract Globally, COVID-19 pandemic has become a threat to humans and to the socio-economic systems they have developed since the industrial revolution. Hence, governments and stakeholders are calling for strategies that could help to restore the normalcy while dealing with this pandemic effectively. Since, till now, the disease is yet to have a cure; therefore, only risk-based decision-making can help governments to achieve a solution that is sustainable in the long term. To help the decision-makers to explore viable actions, we here propose a risk assessment framework for analyzing COVID-19 risk to areas, using integrated hazard and vulnerability components associated with this pandemic for effective risk mitigation. The study is carried on a region administrated by Jaipur municipal corporation (JMC), India. Based on the current understanding of this disease, we hypothesized different COVID-19 risk indices (C19Ri) of the wards of JMC such as proximity to hotspots, total population, population density, availability of clean water and associated land use/ land cover, are related with COVID-19 contagion and calculated them in a GIS-based multi-criteria risk reduction method. The results showed disparateness in COVID-19 risk areas with higher risk in north-eastern and south-eastern zone wards within the boundary of JMC. We proposed to prioritize wards that are under higher risk zones for intelligent decision-making regarding COVID-19 risk reduction through appropriate management of resources-related policy consequences. This study aims to serve as a baseline study to be replicated in other parts of the country or world to eradicate the threat of COVID-19 effectively.