Brown researchers launch tool to map World Cup players, fans and potential to spread disease

As the World Cup approached, Goedel and Pandemic Center Director Jennifer Nuzzo reached out to RIDOH colleagues to see where they could help. The researchers had noticed that this major global event was not only complicated but confusing: FIFA was rebranding stadiums by location, so nearby Gillette Stadium is being referred to as the Boston Stadium, even though it's closer to Providence - and Rhode Island's healthcare systems.

One of the other challenges, from a public health standpoint, was tracking game locations and team movement.

"I'm a spatial scientist: My area of expertise is making maps to help people make decisions," Goedel said. "I thought, let me put something together really quickly that will allow for the identification and tracking of stadiums, teams and dates. This explorer tool came out of an organic need to have a Google Maps-style interface to be able to track what's going on."

The interactive maps were created using a web-based mapping software called ArcGIS Online, which Goedel teaches to students in a Brown public health course focused on geographic information systems.

"Most of the information underlying our tool is available from FIFA, but it's not in usable form," Goedel said. "We simply scraped the data from FIFA's website - catalogs of where teams are staying, game schedules, official fan zones - and made it so people could make the connections and look up information."

A doctoral student is helping Goedel update the maps as more data becomes available.

These types of maps are not unusual, Goedel said: He created many of them during the COVID-19 pandemic. Typically, in the lead-up to a large international sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics, local health departments will coordinate with federal partners to prepare and plan for at least a year.

"The government shutdown earlier this year meant that there were delays in getting funds out the door to support public health planning efforts," he said. "Over the last several years, the mass departures we've seen from the Centers for Disease Control, and the gutting of CDC budgets, have meant that there are fewer people centrally at the national level who are able to help coordinate these kinds of responses."

Although the games won't start until Friday, June 11, the explorer tool has already been used in and beyond Rhode Island, Goedel said. The School of Public Health hosts the STAT Network, which convenes state health officers around public health issues, and several host states have integrated the tracker into their public health planning toolkit. It has been integrated into the Pandemic Center's weekly infectious disease tracking report and is embedded in the World Health Organization's Mass Gathering Network platform.

For public health experts, Goedel said that the most likely scenario for the World Cup is that nothing serious happens.

"Health departments tend to do a really great job at preparing for these kinds of events, such that they identify people as soon as they get sick and get them out of interacting with the public as quickly as possible," Goedel said. "The World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016 were both held in Brazil when there were real concerns about Zika virus. The World Cup in 2022 had concerns about Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). The Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo and 2022 in Beijing all had significant concerns about COVID. There have been outbreaks of measles, botulism, flu and norovirus, but in almost all of these previous mass sporting events, we did not see really large outbreaks."

Goedel is cautiously optimistic about this year's World Cup.

"I'd like to hope that the biggest public health challenges will involve rough hangovers after late-night celebrations of the winning teams," he said.