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Modern Geomatics Technologies and Applications

COVID-19 data analysis and Spatio-temporal hotpot identification

Neda Kaffash Charandabi , Amir Gholami 2
1*

1 Faculty of Geomatic, Marand Technical Faculty, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran
2 Faculty of Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: n_kaffash@tabrizu.ac.ir

Abstract: A major global public health issue that was called COVID-19 emerged in China at the end of 2019.
The disease has caused many life-threatening physicals, emotional and financial problems for all people in the
world. With the increasing number of cases of COVID-19, their clustering and pattern discovery are
essential. Previous research concentrated mainly on the COVID-19 spatial, statistical, or temporal analysis.
This research uses a Spatio-temporal analysis method that integrates time-space cube analysis, spatial
autocorrelation analysis, and emerging hot-spot analysis to investigate COVID-19 Case and Death data. In
this paper, according to the Spatial and Spatio-temporal analysis, hot/cold spots were identified based on data
until March 21. The results of hot/cold spots analysis for cases with different temporal neighborhood steps
across countries showed that an average of 38.06%, 7.3%, 10.78% and 1.86% were identified for oscillating,
sporadic, consecutive and new hot spots ,and 42% for cold spots, respectively. The results confirm a global
crisis that requires serious prevention, hand hygiene, self-quarantine ,and social distancing until vaccines will
be discovered.

Keywords: COVID-19, Spatio-temporal Analysis, Epidemiology

1. Introduction
The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread all over the world since it first appeared in Wuhan, the

capital city of Hubei province, on 31 December 2019. More than 670,000 cases and 31,000 deaths have been
recorded in 199 countries and territories because of the COVID-19, according to the World Health Organization
(WHO) situation reports [1]. The WHO announced COVID-19 as the sixth the world's public health concern on 30
January 2020. It is transmitted via human-to-human droplets or direct contact, and the mean incubation period for
infection has been estimated to be 6.4 days [2].

However, there is little information about this new virus. Researchers in different fields are working towards
discovering an appropriate solution to this global issue [2]. One of the new approaches to better management of