Last weekend, Dr. Glen Barry of Ecointernet launched a comprehensive coronavirus newsfeed and search engine.
According to the data scientist and political ecologist, the coronavirus pandemic that’s currently devastating the world is an environmental event.
The researcher further described COVID-19 as the culmination of brutality to wildlife. Aside from impacting human population growth, the disease also leads to inequity and depleted ecosystem, says Dr. Barry.
It is common knowledge in scientific circles that pandemics are inevitable. Scientists also understand that environmental damage could compound pandemics, and this could potentially spawn authoritarian, anti-democratic responses, according to Dr. Barry.
He explained:
“It seemed logical to extend our existing platform to handle coronavirus information, given the pandemic is a global ecological and social event profoundly impacting our one shared biosphere.”
That’s where the Biosphere Ecosearch comes in.
Using Biosphere Ecosearch as Coronavirus Newsfeed and Search Engine
Biosphere Ecosearch is a result of decades of research and practice. It involves using networked databases to promote policy actions required for global ecological sustainability.
Dr. Barry came up with the idea as a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Wisconsin. However, Biosphere Ecosearch has evolved since then.
Now, a non-profit organization, EcoInternet, has been reconstructing the ecological platform using cutting-edge technology. These include using big data and machine learning in AWS cloud to gather, categorize, rank, and distribute the planet’s ecological information.
Furthermore, as part of the ongoing development, Dr. Barry built an automated aggregator that collects coronavirus news and web content.
Not only does the information update round the clock, but the system can also learn to perform better. What’s more, the coronavirus information is fully searchable on Biosphere Ecosearch.
The researcher stated:
“It is our hope that Biosphere EcoSearch will highlight coronavirus’ ecological linkages to help soundly defeat coronavirus and usher in an age of global ecological sustainability.”
According to the researcher, the cloud-based coronavirus and environmental platform are readily scalable. However, the number of available servers places a limit on the size of cloud resources.
So, to handle heavy traffic on the site, it may be necessary to scale up.
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