- Data Analysis on COVID-19 patterns
- Project Year:
2021
- REU Student (s):
Yun Huen Cheng | Mount Holyoke College MA
- Student 1 Institution:
Mount Holyoke College
- Project Mentor:
Lazaros Gallos
- Project Mentor Area:
DIMACS
- Project Abstract:
The COVID-19 pandemic has a global impact due to its high infectivity and due to human travel behaviors. Focusing on geographic patterns to analyze the evolution of the pandemic, we can determine which areas are at risk of an outbreak. By analyzing the spatial correlations of new active cases in the US at the county level we can show the extent of these correlations at different times. Our results show that the epidemic was largely not uniform but formed clusters. We found that in the first few months long-range spreading was mainly located in cities rather than rural areas. In addition, there exists a percolation transition in November 2020, and a smaller transition in January 2021, both corresponding to peaks of the epidemic.
