ISSS608 2017-18 T1 Assign ZHANG Lidan Visualization

To be a Visual Detective

Background

Data Preparation

Data Visualization

Conclusion

Overviewing Typical Symptoms

I create the bar chart to display the frequency of microblogs including the epidemic symptom words. From this table, it can be noticeable that there is a sharply increase in the frequency from May 18 to May 20, 2011.

Aiming to explore what happens from May 18 to May 20, I decide to reload the microblog dataset into JMP. Through observing the words in the text, I find the words are not only related to flulike symptoms, but also related to stomach problems. Then, I generate one dataset contains flulike symptoms like breath, cough, fatigue, fever, flu, and pneumonia, another dataset contains stomach ache symptoms like diarrhea, nausea, stomach and vomit.

Flulike Problems Spread

Outbreak Areas of Flulike Problems

There are 29243 rows talking about some of the flulike symptoms. After I import the dataset and map and adjust the latitude and longitude coordinates, I use the Pages functions to observe the changes of the distribution by hours from April 30 to May 20. At 8 am on May 18, there was an outbreak of flulike disease in the Downtown, I guess it might be happen in Vastopolis Dome and Convention Center.

To confirm whether there is an outbreak of flulike disease in these areas, I display a Word Cloud to identify the location.

Transmission Process and Reasons

From the messages on May 17 and 18, there may be an Art Festival or Concert in Downtown. Besides, there was a supply for food. Therefore, the outbreak possibly started owing to the food or person-to-person. From the weather dataset, it was west wind from May 16 to May 19, so people in the Eastside were infected with flulike disease, however people in the west part were not. Therefore, I can identify this flu spread mainly because of airborne.

After 6 pm, most people went back to home after work, so other areas were infected gradually. From the following bar chart, there is an increase in daytime population among Downtown, Westside, Uptown. So, there are a large possibility for people who worked in Downtown and Uptown but lived in other areas infecting their families after work.

From 12 am, most people were ready to sleep, so there is less information about flu. However, from 2 am May 19, there is another outbreak of flu. I create another chart to show the changes of each symptom among different hours. In the following chart, it can be observed that it really exists an outbreak from 2 am on May 19. A large quantity of people caught the flu and more people were coughing and got a fever. In addition, there is no decrease in the number of flulike disease in next 48 hours.

From 7 am on May 20, there were lot of people go to hospital because of the serious flulike symptoms. It can be seen from the following map.

Nonetheless, there is good news that it was a slower wind speed on May 20. Thus, the number of infected people may increase in a slower speed.

Stomach Problems Spread

Outbreak Areas of Stomach Problems

There is another outbreak of stomach problem at 2 am on May 19, which happened below the 610 Bridge and along the downstream of the Vast River.

Transmission Process and Reasons

Through observing the text content at noon on May 17th in 2011, there are a lot of words relating to truck accident and traffic on 610. Besides, I find that some messages involve the leak of cargo and fuels into the Vast River and even a fire on the truck, some said this accident lasted around half a day to deal with. In addition, according to the timestamps and relevant messages, people have the stomach disease two days later. The Vast River flows south at a speed of 3 miles per hour, so only people who live in the downstream are influenced by the water pollution.

The following Area Plot shows the changes in each stomach problem symptom each hour. I observe that fewer people came to nausea but more came to vomit. However, I cannot find any trend of decrease in total number.

Additional Findings

Airplane Crash – May 13,2011

Fire in Capital Building – May 14,2011

From the additional findings, there was an airplane crash on May 13th and a fire in Capital Building on May 14th. These two events might increase the possibility rate of the flulike disease symptoms. In the following weather table, the wind direction may lead to the outbreak of flulike in city center and the bad rain and cloudy weather can make people in bad health in this city.