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

How to Read the Dashboard

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).

What’s Changed Since Our Last Update?

We’ve seen some improvement in the public health situation, which we’ve upgraded from red to yellow, as the R0 has declined from its recent peaks. School status has improved to stable, as districts begin to prepare diverse reopening plans. In the financial markets area, we’ve upgraded financial conditions, as high yield spreads have declined further. And commodity prices have been upgraded, as oil has remained stable and China’s coal consumption has recovered.