DEV Community: Jeff Stern

How open source software is fighting COVID-19

Jeff Stern — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 14:43:04 +0000

Work is hard right now. COVID-19 makes it a challenge to stay focused and motivated. But it was cathartic for me to do some research into how the open source community is responding to the global pandemic.

Since the end of January, the community has contributed to thousands of open source repositories that mention coronavirus or COVID-19. These repositories consist of datasets, models, visualizations, web and mobile applications, and more, and the majority are written in JavaScript and Python.

Previously, we shared information about several open hardware makers helping to stop the spread and suffering caused by the coronavirus. Here, we're sharing four (of many) examples of how the open source software community is responding to coronavirus and COVID-19, with the goal of celebrating the creators and the overall impact the open source community is making on the world right now.

1. CHIME by PennSignals

CodeForPhilly / chime

COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics

CHIME

The COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics (penn-chime.phl.io)

Background

The CHIME (COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics) Application is designed to assist hospitals and public health officials with understanding hospital capacity needs as they relate to the COVID pandemic. CHIME enables capacity planning by providing estimates of total daily (i.e. new) and running totals of (i.e. census) inpatient hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and patients requiring ventilation. These estimates are generated using a SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) model, a standard epidemiological modeling technique. Our model has been validated by several epidemiologists including Michael Z. Levy, PhD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics at the Perelman School of Medicine.

Originally developed in github.com/pennsignals/chime, active development is now at github.com/CodeForPhilly/chime.

Documentation

Contributing

Contributing: Overview

Join our Code For Philly project or our Slack workspace in…

View on GitHub

COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics (CHIME) is an open source application built by data scientists at Penn Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The online tool allows hospitals to better understand the impact the virus will have on hospital demand.

Hospital leaders can use CHIME to "get more informed estimates of how many patients will need hospitalization, ICU beds, and mechanical ventilation over the coming days and weeks." A user can input how many patients are currently hospitalized and see, based on other variables, how demand might increase over the coming days.

CHIME is primarily built with Python and uses the pandas open source dependency for much of the underlying data-transformation number-crunching to generate the estimates. Pandas has a relatively robust team and is one of the most commonly used Python libraries for data analysis and, like all open source projects, is highly dependent on users' support for income.

2. Real-time COVID-19 visualization by Locale.ai

localeai / covid19-live-visualization

Live visualization of novel corona virus (COVID19) outbreak

COVID19 Visualization

Please note. The data used in the visualization is from an opensource project. We don't guarantee accurate numbers, but we are trying our best to find a reliable source of data.

Project setup

# Clone the project
git clone https://github.com/localeai/covid19-live-visualization.git
# Install dependencies
npm install

# start development server
npm run serve

# generate production build
npm run build

Environment variables

Copy the .env.example file to .env and specify the mentioned variables.

cp .env.example .env

variables

VUE_APP_MAPBOX_TOKEN : Mapbox API token. You can get one for yourself from here
VUE_APP_COVID_API_URL : API which gives the layers data to the webapp. Currently the layers are picked up from periodically generated file from GitHub Repo. Use the static data URL as the API URL.

VUE_APP_COVID_API_URL=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/haxzie/covid19-layers-api/master/data/layers

VUE_APP_API_REPO_URL : The GitHub api url for the repo which holds the layers data. Used to pickup the last updated date from the…

View on GitHub

Maps that track the number of cases help us visualize the relative scale and spread of COVID-19. Locale.ai created an open source, interactive visualization of all known cases of COVID-19. The map provides live updates with new data as it becomes available.

I find this project especially interesting because the data is retrieved via an open source API created by GitHub user ExpDev07 that queries an open source dataset from John Hopkins University. The John Hopkins dataset (an aggregate of more than a dozen other sources) is currently the most popular COVID19-related project on GitHub. This is the branching nature of open source at its finest!

Locale.ai built the visualization website using Vue.js, a popular framework that allows web developers to create modern web apps. Vue.js was created and continues to be maintained by Evan You, one of the few people who have made a full-time career as an open source maintainer.

3. DXY-COVID-19-Crawler by BlankerL

BlankerL / DXY-COVID-19-Crawler

2019新型冠状病毒疫情实时爬虫及API | COVID-19/2019-nCoV Realtime Infection Crawler and API

2019新型冠状病毒疫情实时爬虫

简体中文 | English

本项目为2019新型冠状病毒（COVID-19/2019-nCoV）疫情状况的实时爬虫，数据来源为丁香园。

感谢大家对本项目的支持，为了不让爬虫泛滥占用过多流量，导致其他更有需要的用户无法及时获取到丁香园的数据，请大家减少对爬虫的部署。

我已经开放了一个API接口，其他人如果需要这份数据做其他的可视化，可以直接查看并调用API来获取数据，把丁香园的流量让给更有需要的人。

API：https://lab.isaaclin.cn/nCoV
注：

API返回中英文城市名称。 更多信息可以关注Issue #61。
受限于服务器带宽压力，自2020年3月19日起，API接口/nCoV/api/overall及/nCoV/api/area不再返回时间序列数据，时间序列数据可以在数据仓库的json文件夹下获取。如果您调用接口时使用了latest=0参数，则需要修改请求，否则无需修改。

本项目遵循MIT开源许可，同时，若引用本API，烦请在您的项目中声明引用。

科研人员

近期多位高校师生与我联系，希望用这些数据做科研之用。然而，并非所有人都熟悉API的使用和JSON数据的处理，因此我部署了一个数据仓库，直接推送大部分统计/数据分析软件可以直接打开的csv文件，希望能够减轻各位的负担。

初衷

衷心感谢各位医疗工作者的付出和努力，苦于没有医学背景，只能通过自己的方式，让大家增强对疫情的关注，让未感染者做好更全面的防护。

项目介绍

本项目每分钟访问并爬取一次数据，储存在MongoDB中，并且保存所有历史数据的更新，希望能够在未来回溯病情时能有所帮助。

爬虫本身并不复杂，可以移步上方API，查看本爬虫能够获取到的所有信息条目。

数据异常

目前发现浙江省/湖北省部分时间序列数据存在数据异常，可能的原因是丁香园数据为人工录入，某些数据可能录入错误，比如某一次爬虫获取的浙江省治愈人数为537人，数分钟后被修改回正常人数。

本项目爬虫仅从丁香园公开的数据中获取并储存数据，并不会对异常值进行判断和处理，因此如果将本数据用作科研目的，请自己对数据进行清洗。同时，我已经在Issue中开放了异常数据反馈通道，可以直接在此问题中反馈潜在的异常数据，我会定期检查并处理。

Reference

如果您仅希望通过本API在网页端实现实时数据可视化，可以参考shfshanyue/2019-ncov项目。该项目能够在网页后端每隔30分钟自动运行爬虫，获取最新数据，并渲染在前端直接返回，不会受到API数据返回速度的影响。
如果您希望使用R语言对数据进行分析，可以参考pzhaonet/ncovr项目，该项目整合通过GitHub数据仓库/API数据提取两种模式。

Research

所有研究结果均仅作为参考。

yijunwang0805/YijunWang

Demo

网站：https://ncov.deepeye.tech/ 时间序列疫情地图、疫情小区及分析报告。
pzhaonet/ncov 网站：https://ncov2020.org
cuihuan/2020_wuhan 可视化效果：http://cuihuan.net/wuhan/news.html
hack-fang/nCov 可视化效果：http://yiqing.ahusmart.com/
ohdarling/2019-nCoV-Charts 可视化效果：https://2019-ncov-trends.tk/
quadpixels/quadpixels.github.io 可视化效果：https://quadpixels.github.io/
lzxue/yiqingditu 可视化效果：https://lzxue.github.io/yiqingditu/
covid19viz/covid19viz.github.io 可视化效果：https://covid19viz.github.io/
biluochun/data-ncov 可视化效果：https://biluochun.github.io/data-ncov/index.html
Moyck/2019NCOV
Mistletoer/NCP-historical-data-visualization-2019-nCoV-

捐赠

本项目不需要任何捐赠。

全国各地的医疗资源都处于短缺的状态。如果希望捐赠的人，请移步各个红十字会或者官方认可的捐赠平台，他们能够更加妥善地运用这笔资金，帮助更有需要的人。

祝大家一切都好。

View on GitHub

DXY-COVID-19-Crawler was created in January and is one of the earliest responses from the open source community to COVID-19. When the virus was spreading primarily in China, the Chinese medical community was using a site called DXY.cn to report and track cases. To make the information more readily available and usable by others, GitHub user BlankerL wrote a web crawler to systematically collect data from the DXY.cn site and make it available via an API and data warehouse. That data has been used by academic researchers and others to examine trends and visualize the spread of the virus. So far, DXY-COVID-19-Crawler has been starred more than 1,300 times and forked nearly 300 times.

BlankerL wrote the web crawler using Python and a package called Beautiful Soup. Beautiful Soup is an application that allows Python developers to easily scrape information from websites. Beautiful Soup is maintained by Leonard Richardson, who also works full-time as a software architect.

4. City of Tokyo's COVID-19 task force website

tokyo-metropolitan-gov / covid19

東京都新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト / Tokyo COVID-19 Task Force website

東京都新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト

日本語 | English | Español | 한국어 | 繁體中文 | 简体中文 | Tiếng Việt | ภาษาไทย | Français

貢献の仕方

Issues にあるいろいろな修正にご協力いただけると嬉しいです。

詳しくは貢献の仕方を御覧ください。

行動原則

詳しくはサイト構築にあたっての行動原則を御覧ください。

ライセンス

本ソフトウェアは、MITライセンスの元提供されています。

このサイトから派生したサイト

このサイトから派生したサイトを御覧ください。

翻訳者向け情報

翻訳をお手伝いいただける方は、How to contribute translationsを御覧ください。

開発者向け情報

開発をお手伝いいただける方は、開発者向け情報を御覧ください。

View on GitHub

Many cities around the world have updated their websites with information for their residents about COVID-19. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government created a comprehensive website that "aims to allow Tokyo residents, companies with offices in Tokyo, and visitors to Tokyo to grasp the current situation and take measures and precautions accordingly."

Unlike many other cities, Tokyo decided to open source its site. The project boasts contributions by more than 180 different users, and at least three other cities in Japan (Nagano, Chiba, and Fukuoka City) remixed the site. The project is an example of how cities can better serve their citizens by building openly.

There's an incredible amount of open source technology powering Tokyo's open source website. Using the Tidelift application, I identified 1,365 dependencies used in the project. All of this complexity happens because 38 direct dependencies (i.e., dependencies the developers explicitly decided to use) have dependencies of their own. That said, maintainers of more than a thousand different open source dependencies (including Nuxt.js, Prettier, Babel, Ajv, and more) are in a small way responsible for helping Tokyo share information with their citizens.

Other projects

There are many other important projects being built in the open in response to COVID-19. I am inspired by how the open source community is responding to this pandemic and leveraging other open source technologies to work quickly. The weeks ahead will be difficult, but I know we can continue to find motivation in the open source community.

If you are working on an open source project related to COVID-19, please share it in the comments so we can help spread the word.

This article was originally published on Opensource.com and is licensed under Creative Commons SA-BY 4.0.

Tidelift and Girls Who Code partner to support diversity in open source

Jeff Stern — Tue, 28 Jan 2020 15:23:33 +0000

It has been well documented that open source has a serious diversity problem. It’s not OK, and we need to support change—not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because open source projects need contributions from as many people as possible to continue building the software that runs nearly every company and industry.

Today at Tidelift, we are taking a step toward encouraging a more diverse group of open source developers by releasing Explore Open Source, a curriculum to encourage open source participation among the Girls Who Code students at 200 colleges and universities.

“Improving the participation of women and other underrepresented groups in open source software starts with providing access to educational opportunities earlier in the pipeline. Because of this exciting collaboration, Girls Who Code Alumni will have the opportunity to start contributing to open source projects before they take their first job in the tech industry.”

– Jackie Blizzard, Director of Curriculum, Girls Who Code

In a recent survey on open source from GitHub, less than 5% of respondents identify as non-male. When the Tidelift team shared this fact with a room of students, the students were appalled. These young women, who are all members of the University of Michigan’s Girls Who Code college chapter, already knew that women were heavily underrepresented in computer science but did not realize the issue was even more pronounced in the open source community.

IMG_2115Tidelift developed an open source curriculum with Girls Who Code. Girls Who Code students at the University of Michigan provided feedback on the final product.

Despite the current imbalance, the same survey reveals that women and men are just as likely to say they are very interested in making open source contributions. The survey authors conclude that although everyone uses open source, “its contributors do not yet reflect its broad audience.” Again, this is not OK, and it doesn’t have to be this way.

Today, in the business world, open source is everywhere. Tidelift has found 92% of all applications contain open source libraries. Open source is also a career-builder, with developers commonly including open source contributions on their resumes.

Given this, more software developers should be engaging with open source earlier in their education and careers. For example, David Humphrey teaches courses on open source at Seneca College. During the semester, his students learn git, contribute to open source projects, and learn the intangible skills of “how to cope” in open source communities. His students receive real-world experience resolving issues and make pull requests for large open source projects like Firefox, VS Code, and WordPress.

Unfortunately, courses like this are exceedingly rare at universities. Often times, new developers first use and contribute to open source in their free time or at their first job. Some find welcoming open source communities, and enthusiastically step up their contributions. However, the GitHub survey finds many don’t feel accepted, so they move away from open source over time. Still others don’t have the luxury of working for free, as many projects demand.

We believe it’s critical to encourage more students to participate in open source, especially those who have been historically underrepresented, as an important step toward creating a more diverse open source community.

It’s perhaps no surprise that great people behind Girls Who Code feel the same way—with a mission to close the gender gap in tech, Girls Who Code has already served 185,000 girls interested in computer science. We’ve been excited to work with them to bring additional open source education to Girls Who Code students.

“Open source software development plays an important role in building the technology that shapes our lives, and yet less than 5% of open source contributors identify as something other than male. Girls Who Code is well aware of the tech industry’s diversity challenge but Tidelift is taking strides to ensure that all people’s voices are represented and compensated for their contributions. Through Girls Who Code College Loops, we’re excited to collaborate with Tidelift to introduce open source to women majoring in computer science at 200 college campuses nationally and to continue to increase female representation.”

– Loraya Harrington-Trujillo, Director of Alumni Programs, Girls Who Code

Our Explore Open Source curriculum is now available to all students participating in Girls Who Code College Loops, an extracurricular program already available at 200 colleges and universities in the United States. College Loops meet bi-weekly, and members can choose to use our open source activities during their sessions. Students who complete these activities will practice collaborating with git and will seek out and hopefully make their first PR to an open source project. The students will also learn about inclusive initiatives like the GitHub first-timers-only tag and watch video profiles of women in open source from Mozilla and CloudBees. Abby Cabunoc Mayes, who is the Working Open Lead at Mozilla Foundation, shares in her profile how she first became involved with open source.

“There was an open source club at my school during undergrad, but I never went to it because I never felt like I fit in,” Abby shares with the students. “I really regret it now—knowing how powerful open source is—that I didn’t get started earlier.”

Our curriculum includes a mix of offline (“unplugged”) activities and tutorials that inspire and enable young women to make their first contribution to open source.

All of us at Tidelift are proud to be partnering with and supporting Girls Who Code. If you are a student and your college or university does not yet have a Girls Who Code College Loop, apply to start one here.

Inclusiveness is a core Tidelift value, and we're fully committed to supporting work that brings more women and members of other underrepresented communities into open source. Beyond education, we need to make structural changes to the open source community that promote inclusiveness—such as improving documentation and making communities more welcoming to newcomers. Look for more from us on this in 2020.

The Explore Open Source curriculum could not have been possible without the contributions of many. Thank you especially to Jackie Blizzard-Caron, Director of Curriculum at Girls Who Code, and the entire GWC Curriculum team; Abby Cabunoc Mayes from Mozilla, Kate Hudson from Mozilla, and Kara de la Marck from Cloudbees; Albert Lee; and the Girls Who Code College Loop at the University of Michigan.

DEV Community: Jeff Stern

How open source software is fighting COVID-19

1. CHIME by PennSignals

CodeForPhilly / chime

COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics

CHIME

Background

Documentation

Contributing

2. Real-time COVID-19 visualization by Locale.ai

localeai / covid19-live-visualization

Live visualization of novel corona virus (COVID19) outbreak

COVID19 Visualization

Project setup

Environment variables

variables

3. DXY-COVID-19-Crawler by BlankerL

BlankerL / DXY-COVID-19-Crawler

2019新型冠状病毒疫情实时爬虫及API | COVID-19/2019-nCoV Realtime Infection Crawler and API

2019新型冠状病毒疫情实时爬虫

初衷

项目介绍

数据异常

Reference

Research

Demo

捐赠

4. City of Tokyo's COVID-19 task force website

tokyo-metropolitan-gov / covid19

東京都 新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト / Tokyo COVID-19 Task Force website

東京都 新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト

日本語 | English | Español | 한국어 | 繁體中文 | 简体中文 | Tiếng Việt | ภาษาไทย | Français

貢献の仕方

行動原則

ライセンス

このサイトから派生したサイト

翻訳者向け情報

開発者向け情報

Other projects

Tidelift and Girls Who Code partner to support diversity in open source

東京都新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト / Tokyo COVID-19 Task Force website

東京都新型コロナウイルス感染症対策サイト