BOSTON, Massachusetts — The Development Data Lab (DDL) is a nonprofit research organization. At the DDL, a team of researchers and professors have collaborated during the pandemic to develop a data platform to support India in its domestic COVID-19 response.
The Development Data Lab
The Borgen Project spoke with Paul Novosad, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College and a co-founder of DDL. Novosad says that DDL is known for its focus on India. When the virus first began spreading in India in March 2020, the lab received several inquiries, including requests for data on the number of hospital beds, ICU units and ventilators in India. In previous projects, Novosad says that the lab had already collected some of this information. Upon realizing the demand for this data among researchers and policymakers, DDL began an effort to publicize its data and to “collect and clean” other data to add to the set.
The dataset has expanded to include district and sub-district level information. The measures include hospital capacity, predicted COVID-19 mortality based on age, levels of air pollution and more. Novosad says that DDL, therefore, supports the government’s COVID-19 response by offering advisory experts a resource for understanding the situation at a more granular level.
DDL’s Dataset Tools
Accompanying the dataset are three data visualization tools, all published on DDL’s website. Overlaid on top of a map of India, one of these plots visualizes district-level information on hospital beds per 1,000 people. Another figure of the same type estimates mortality based on age. A third figure plots agricultural commodity volumes. This shows a marked decline between March and May 2020 when many markets were shut down.
In addition to developing data platforms supporting India’s COVID-19 response, DDL has partnered with the World Bank and the anti-poverty research group, IDinsight, to conduct a multi-round survey on the effects of COVID-19 in rural India. Rural India has experienced shocks to agriculture, income and health service access among other impacts.
As of December 18, 2020, India had had more than 10 million COVID-19 cases and more than 145,000 deaths. Rural India is disproportionately represented among these cases after the countryside underwent what Indian media dubbed a “rural surge.” However, in January 2021, daily case totals had reduced 80% from September 2020. The country’s COVID-19 situation has shown signs of improvement since mid-September 2020 when India’s daily case count was roughly 90,000 a day.
The SHRUG Platform
The Development Data Lab aims to help developing countries whose policy responses are constrained by a lack of data. DDL does this by providing data sources and analytical tools. In 2019, the lab published its SHRUG (Socioeconomic High-Resolution Rural-Urban Geographic Dataset) platform. SHRUG is an open-source dataset containing a wide array of socioeconomic data that spans 25 years and covers more than half a million villages and 8,000 towns in India.
At the level of these localities, the dataset includes information on everything from demographics and public goods to data on roads and labor share. Along with a dataset, DDL offers a web application that visualizes the underlying district-level SHRUG data overlaid on a map of India.
The Granularity of Data
According to Novosad, SHRUG is distinct from other data sources in the granularity that it offers. Aggregated data sources used in governmental economic decision-making precludes lawmakers from making policy decisions tailored to the local level.
Novosad explains that, in the United States, it would be the equivalent of having state-level data sources where decision-making is based on average GDP growth in California or average demographic change. With the vast amounts of data that SHRUG offers at the town and village level, Novosad says that researchers who study India can use the platform to get a “much clearer sense of what’s happening locally.”
Going Beyond COVID-19
Novosad adds that DDL regularly updates the platform with new data and intends to continue doing so. In the immediate future, the lab will be releasing detailed data on the Indian court system. Among other variables, this set will contain data on delays in court verdicts, which is a significant issue in India. Nationally, nearly 40 million court cases are pending with many of these cases taking years to be resolved.
Novosad says that the DDL’s current focus is India, but there are intentions to expand efforts to other developing countries too. Therefore, the efforts of the Development Data Lab can better inform solutions to issues in developing countries.
– Coalter Palmer
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