If you have taken the train during the Spring Festival travel rush, how do you know if you happened to have traveled with a carrier of the novel coronavirus who was later diagnosed?
Chinese developers recently launched a program that enables travelers to type in their travel dates and train numbers to find out. The program, backed by publicly available data, instantly went viral on Chinese social media as millions used it to check their risks for infection.
Big data is playing an important role in China's ongoing battle against the novel coronavirus, which had infected more than 20,000 and killed 490 on the Chinese mainland by the end of Tuesday.
The official online railway ticket-booking platform 12306 has provided authorities with information on close contacts of those travelers who were diagnosed with the virus.
"We analyze data of those who were seated three rows in front of or behind known or suspected patients so that the epidemic control authorities can make informed moves," said Zhu Jiansheng with the China Academy of Railway Sciences, the operator of 12306.
Internet giants joined the battle equipped with a large amount of data. Baidu Map, for example, updates real-time road closure information and population density at public places to guide the public in avoiding crowded places.
Tencent, another Internet company, offers real-time fact-checking services to curb the spread of rumors. Users can type in keywords in a mini-program backed by databases to see if a news story is accurate.
In addition to tracking potential patients and advising the public, big data also helps the government with decision making.
The Beijing municipal government's decision to suspend inter-provincial expressway transport while not restricting the passenger flow of civil aviation and high-speed railways is based on big data analysis, said Wang Yukai, a member of the Advisory Committee for State Informatization, in an interview with Legal Daily, a Beijing-based newspaper.
Massive traffic blocking can control the risks, but may bring considerable loss to economic and social development, he said, pointing out that accurate big data analysis can help the government to weigh the trade-offs and strike a balance.
While big data has shown its power in curbing the spread of the virus, there are still issues such as the lack of information-sharing across different regions and between companies and governments, Ma Liang, a professor with Renmin University, told Shanghai-based news website The Paper.
Ma also warned that authorities should be cautious in using the data, as any data leaks could make the situation worse for some patients.
"Big data is a double-edged sword that has both value and risks," Ma said, adding that government departments and companies should put privacy protection on top of the list when using big data analysis.
