Spatiotemporal dynamics of COVID-19 in Wuhan based on community notifications

Understanding the fine-scale spatial dynamics of infectious disease outbreaks is essential for effective urban epidemic response. This study leverages a novel dataset of over 2700 community-level epidemic notifications, shared publicly in residential areas and through social media during the early COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China, to map the intra-urban spread of the virus from February 2 to March 4, 2020. After manually structuring and geocoding these notifications, we constructed a high-resolution spatiotemporal dataset of 13,346 confirmed cases across 1532 neighborhoods. Using spatial statistical techniques, we identified the evolution of spatial clustering, directional shifts in epidemic centers, and seven statistically significant spatio-temporal clusters with relative risks ranging from 1.21 to 12.48. Our results reveal the critical role of urban morphology, population density, and built environment characteristics in shaping transmission dynamics. Notably, Qingshan District emerged as a persistent hotspot due to its open neighborhood design and delayed compliance with containment measures. This research underscores the value of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) for early, fine-scale epidemic monitoring and demonstrates its utility as a complement to official surveillance systems in public emergencies.