Data analysis and visualization are helping answer a variety of questions about COVID-19 such as who is most at risk, how is the disease spreading, and what approaches might work best for treatments. However, setting up a computer environment to analyze the large amounts of data needed to answer such questions is no easy task. It requires selecting data libraries, software, and hardware and estimating how much memory and computing power will be needed. This process is time consuming and few individuals have the complex skill set needed to accomplish it.

RENCI scientists have developed a new digital data science laboratory called Blackbalsam that can help significantly shorten the planning stage for these efforts with a standardized environment housing computational and data sets for COVID-19 analytics.  

“As COVID-19 progressed, I saw that researchers were conducting analyses and visualization on an increasingly varied set of COVID-19 data,” said Blackbalsam co-author Steven Cox, assistant director of software systems architecture at RENCI. “I realized that it would be very helpful to have an environment that overcomes well-known technological and skill barriers by providing an interface that researchers with statistical, analytical, and visualization skills could use.”