Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras , Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) partners with Semantic Web India, a firm based in Bengaluru in order to upgrade data.
It will upgrade a website collating critical COVID-19 data and provide standardised format for the advantage of people and researchers.
It will benefit researchers as it will automate the process of data collection from Central and State Government websites and collate them. This will provide historical data as well as analyses.
The official said that the website www.covid19india.org offered a view on the pandemic. The collaboration will help to upgrade the data.
Explaining this initiative, V Kamakoti, Associate Dean (Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research), IIT Madras, said, “The portal was providing a valuable service by making this data publicly available at one place, which is important to understand the pandemic.”
“It benefitted the general public and researchers studying the COVID-19 spread. Factoring these aspects, the three institutions are collaborating with Semantic Web India to provide similar data, with some added improvements,” he added.
“The data on COVID-19 is being put out in public domain by various government entities. This initiative collates all this data and provides a one-stop-shop in a standardised format for the benefit of researchers and general public,” said Kamakotii.
Speaking about this initiative, Siva Athreya, Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Bengaluru, said, “covid19india.org has been available since the pandemic started and has tracked the pandemic across geographies in India. It has been a valuable contribution. While the website will remain active, they would not be updating the data. IIT Madras, IISc and ISI have joined hands with Semantic Web India to continue updating the data and making it available at a new public repository hosted at www.incovid19.org.”
“Further, the consolidated data will be made available to the general audience through a public repository with appropriate APIs (application programming interface) matching those currently available at the earlier portal to ensure least disruption to applications and consumers of information,” he added.
