This article was published on March 31, 2020

Google offers comprehensive coronavirus datasets to researchers for free


Google offers comprehensive coronavirus datasets to researchers for free Image by: Pixabay

One of the ways scientists and researchers are trying to understand and find a solution for coronavirus is through building AI models. To foster these efforts, Google Cloud is offering free datasets for researchers under the COVID-19 Public Dataset Program.

Last night, the company the company revealed an open repository of coronavirus-related databases, including ones from Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering (JHU CSSE), Global Health Data from the World Bank, and OpenStreetMap data.

All these free databases will have a “COVID-19” label for differentiation and easy access; they’ll remain freely accessible until September 15.

Researchers can also use BigQuery ML to build advanced AI models for COVID-19 research. BigQuery ML is Google’s service that enables programmers to build and execute machine learning models through simple SQL queries in the company’s cloud-based data warehouse.

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The current pandemic has thrust AI researchers and companies into action to help devise treatments. Last month, Chinese tech giants Baidu and Alibaba open-sourced various models for AI researchers to speed up the process for coronavirus-related studies. Earlier this month, Allen Institute of AI partnered with several research groups to form a CORD-19 open dataset, making thousands of research papers and articles related to the disease available for free.

You can learn more about the COVID-19 Public Dataset Program and browse through these datasets here.

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