Political scientist and urban specialist Robert Muggah has worked with the Robotics Institute's CREATE Lab to use their EarthTime platform to examine the threat of pandemics such as COVID-19 and ponder how governments and other groups can respond.

The presentation displays time-lapse images of the spread of pandemics and the interactions of governments and urban areas around the world.

EarthTime is a map-based platform that displays time-lapse visualizations of data. The new production, "COVID-19: The Pandemic and the City," shows how pandemics of the past have spread and the growth and interaction of urban areas around the world. An interactive version, suitable for use with a desktop or laptop computer, enables the user to zoom in and out of each visualization.

Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute and the SecDev Foundation, produced the pandemic presentation with Paul Dille, senior software developer for the CREATE Lab. An online lecture by Muggah, using the EarthTime story, is available on YouTube.

EarthTime is a partnership between the CREATE Lab and the World Economic Forum (WEF), and has become a fixture at the WEF's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.