COVID-19 Heatmap in HongKong

These days I see my mobile to check the information about COVID-19 frequently. I can’t get this infection off my mind and often refer to the following government website.

https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/index.html

However, the Coronavirus disease map by the HK government is hard to see for me on mobile. That’s why I created a heatmap based on HK government report data.

https://tomokamoto10.carto.com/builder/a187e405-53f9-45c9-9573-b326cbab9dc1/embed

I accessed to HK government official website to collect the infected data and I came across the PDF file listed buildings with confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the past 14 days. I decided to create a heatmap based on these data.

However, I faced two troubles when I tried to collect the information. One is the data file prepared by PDF, another is there is the same name as a place abroad too. I need to solve these issues at the same time.

First of all, I tried to scrape these data by preparing a script. I searched how to collect the dataset from PDF but I ashamed I gave up the method because it seems not easy to do. Thinking in a different way sometimes helps me to get a good idea. In this case, I adopted the method to prepare the material before creating the heatmap as below.

1. Using UiPath which is RPA software, the machine copies the name of the building in order from the PDF file.
2. Paste to geocoding website the dataset one by one.
3. Record the received latitude and longitude in the spreadsheet

I dealt with the first problem with this method but another one still obstacles that block my way. When the machine inputs the name of the building in the entry field, the screen often showed a strange point abroad.

The reason is obviously there is the same name as a place all over the world. Especially when it comes to Hong Kong, there is a ton of the number of the case by virtue of history. I amended these wrong data by manual finally. That operation greatly exhausted me.

After tidy up the material, I used carto.com as a mapping platform. This service provides some useful functions for us. For instance, I can change the display style easily. It’s important for me to particular about visualizing because I want to make it easier to see the map in the first place.

Thanks to these useful tools, I barely released this map finally. Please share with someone and utilize this heatmap if you are interested in that.