Crisis Dashboard: Big Data Helps Paint the Big Picture (Update)

Our crisis dashboard includes signals from three areas: 1) public health, 2) the consumer sector and 3) financial markets. By pulling big data from traditional sources (earnings growth and gross domestic product, for example) and nontraditional sources (like Google Trends and Glassdoor), we can create a better mosaic of the road back. Public health, of course, is the key: until there’s a vaccine, the cascading impact of the virus may continue.

The dashboard color codes (red, yellow or green) indicate the current state of each signal, while the arrows indicate the trend (improving, deteriorating or unchanged).

The dashboard has remained fairly steady since our last update, with one notable exception: the public health front. The number of coronavirus cases continues to climb, and the R0 rate, the average number of people infected by one person, is up. That’s concerning, since so much depends on progress in the fight against COVID-19. We’ve downgraded our public health indicator to red and trending down.

Public Health

  • Globally, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases continues to rise—it’s currently over nine million. Cases are rising in some part of the world, such as Brazil and a resurgence of cases in the US.