The Collective for Open Data Distribution-Keralam (CODD-K) is a group of technologists, academicians, students, and the public advocating for open data. This collective, in a primitive form, was initiated during the devastating 2018 Kerala floods, which brought together the experts and general public through social media platforms to coordinate rescue missions through citizen-led open/crowd-sourcing strategies.

Covid19Kerala.info is a citizen science effort from CODD-K to overcome the limitations of unstructured data released by the Govt. and to generate open and reusable datasets for analysis and visualization. This specific effort originated during the early days of COVID-19 in India, specifically during the third week of March 2020. This started as a small group of enthusiastic volunteers, and at present, over 60 volunteers from various domains are currently part of this effort. Covid19Kerala.info is one of the first COVID-19 data-visualization efforts on the outbreak of the pandemic in Kerala. It is also the first bilingual dashboard to explain the outbreak’s progression, updated daily.

In addition to the public dashboard, the COVID-19 data from Kerala that was collected, collated, enriched, and vetted from various public sources are periodically published on Zenodo.org as an open dataset for use by researchers and policymakers. The non-availability of structured datasets limits retrospective analysis and upstream efforts like visualization and data-story-telling. We addressed this knowledge gap through our collective effort and used the structured datasets for narrating Kerala’s COVID-19 story accurately.
The recently-published JAMIA paper by CODD-K highlights the importance of citizen science initiatives during such grim times and demonstrates how a scalable model like ours can come in handy during any crisis of this scale. Our article also highlights the importance of framing specific guidelines for the public data release for COVID-19 or other epidemics. To our knowledge, this is the first peer-reviewed published on the COVID-19 pandemic in Kerala. Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa203

Since the volume of the COVID-19 data released daily is increasing unprecedently, we are continually striving to update our analysis methods and data representation to meet the challenges. With the hope that this pandemic subsides in the next half-year or so in Kerala, we plan to consult with the government to help formulate guidelines on data format, structure, and timelines for using our framework as a plug-and-play model in future. We hope that our work will encourage researchers, the government, and various public bodies to release their data in open formats. The collective also initiated a series of webinar masterclasses to train the public on data formats, practices, and data analysis tools.

The formation of the team was a spontaneous and voluntary effort. The team uses open source software platforms for the entire data processing, yet maintaining the quality of work. It has now evolved into a multidisciplinary gathering that is keen on publishing peer-reviewed articles for documentation. The team has grown into 60+ members and includes experts in data analysis, IT, Genomics, Molecular Biology, Academicians, and students. A subgroup of library and information science professionals has come forward to curate data. The team now would be investing its resources to focus on improving the quality of data releases and aspires to release Linked Open Data (LOD) shortly.

Useful Links:
1. https://covid19kerala.info/
2. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa203
3. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3818096
4. https://team.covid19kerala.info/