Earthvisionz Launches COVID-19 Alert System

Earthvisionz has created a COVID-19 alert for people who have to be on the move in spite of the risk posed by the global pandemic.

“We’re really a decision-support platform, and we pull in all kinds of live data and map it,” Jeff Schott, Co-Founder and President of Earthvisionz said. “We’ve got alerts for every imaginable kind of disasters and weather event, everything from floods and hurricanes and wildfires to things like smog alerts and reverse 911 alerts. This pandemic became the ultimate risk — like, ever. We have more than 140 alert types, and the coronavirus was a natural addition, so we just integrated it.”

The Earthvisionz team began working on the coronavirus alerts in early March and had them operational two weeks later, Schott said.

“We picked up a number of data feeds from mainly Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore," he said. “They’re tracking the number of cases, number of deaths globally, and putting that on a map. We are displaying the Johns Hopkins map and also taking the data feed and displaying that information on our map command center.”

Earthvisionz also uses the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Weather Service and others to provide alerts to users of the software that can be received on any device, Schott said.

For the coronavirus, he said, “we have a hot link to every state, with the statistics for each state, and we’re even going to the county level in some cases. The hot link takes you to that state’s coronavirus website, which is full of all kinds of other information.”

The alerts especially should be useful for people who work in the field, he said.

“Those people include property inspectors and people who do all kinds of repairs after disasters — restoration companies like BELFOR or ServPro — and field services companies that take care of commercial and residential assets,” Schott said. “By giving our customers the ability to deliver this alert, people can navigate wherever they are, know where the hotspots are, know where the closures are, and also see all that information in relation to other kinds of disaster events they’re responding to — like right now, today, there’s a lot of flooding.

“So if you’re in Michigan and you get our coronavirus alert, you’re able to see all the hot spots on the map and then click on the state website and get all kinds of other information including things like closures and curfews.”