A new program at the University of Maryland is poised to provide social data that can impact healthcare, government and policy. 
The Social Data Science Center will be supported by Facebook for its first three years. The center will assist researchers with accessing, analyzing and applying social science data by using survey methods, measurement, information management, data visualization and analytics.
One area of focus for the center is using a public survey tool to address the COVID-19 pandemic in collaboration with other universities. Using survey data plus data on symptomatic US residents from Facebook, the center hopes to predict coronavirus hot spots in the US and globally. The center is also building COVID-19 dashboards and additional visual data platforms.