COVIZ: Visualization of Effects of COVID-19 on New York City Through Socially Impactful Virtual Reality

This work is the product of a collaboration between students studying computer science and social work to visualize the impacts and effects of COVID-19 in New York City in a virtual environment (VE). As a proof of concept, the team chose two datasets from NYC Open Data; COVID-19 infection cases and rates per zip code and vehicular traffic rates within the five boroughs of New York City. To foster unexplored insights into the relationship between these data, we developed a virtual reality application that provides a stronger sense of embodiment and ownership of urban visualization analysis when manipulating 3D virtual maps for comparison in a VE.