Covid-19 pandemic crisis and the smart working revolution

The World Health Organization, once the coronavirus illness reached 118,000 cases in over 110 countries and territories around the world declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11(Time Magazine)

As a consequence, social distancing measures were, by no mean, implemented worldwide by governments to slower the virus run and, various business sectors, in particular those ones based on services creation and delivery, started relying on smart working practices for their employees.

Smart working is not a novel concept or standard. Constant technological developments are making possible new approaches changing the traditional professional relation of an employee with the workplace and their work responsibilities and performance. 

For instance, the UK government published in 2013 a guide to promote the so called the Way We Work 3W initiative in support of smart working in the public sector.

However, the current pandemic crisis has definitely boosted this practice and what appeared to be a secondary phenomenon has gain momentum.

Definitions of smart working

https://www.unece.org.net4all.ch/fileadmin/DAM/stats/documents/ece/ces/ge.58/2017/mtg4/Paper_11-_Di_Nicola_rev.pdf

https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/european-ai-alliance/project-eu-xxi-or-how-lead-ai-world-open-letter-european-parliament-european

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-way-we-work-tw3-best-practice-guidelines-for-smarter-working

http://www.flexibility.co.uk/downloads/TW3-Guide-to-SmartWorking-withcasestudies-5mb.pdf

Statistics

Reference 

Chart from research report jointly published in 2017 by ILO and Eurofound working anytime, anywhere: the effects on the world of work. 

The abbreviation T/ICTM stands for Telework/ICT-mobile work.

How we measure CO2 emissions?

Snow falling seasonally in Greenland and Antarctica or on glaciers around the globe is slowly compressed into ice and during this process, bubbles of air remained trapped in the ice. Scientists and researchers, using ice cores, are able "to read" these bubbles and thus to measure the concentration of gases, including the one of CO2 for a specific period of time.Ice cores are created drilling the ice pack as shown in the picture underneath.

Researcher Margarita Marinova uses an auger to drill a core from the ice pack Credit: Jennifer Heldman, National Science Foundation (NSF)

 

 The layers of ice accumulating in the coldest regions of Earth become thus a sort of paper where scientists can read the type of atmosphere characterising other times. Ice core records allow us to get continuous reconstructions of past climate, going back a minimum of 800,000 years in the history of world's ancient amosphere. By watching past concentrations of greenhouse gases in layers in ice cores, scientists can calculate how modern amounts of CO2 and methane compare to those of the past, and, essentially, compare past concentrations of greenhouse gases to temperature.

For further information on Ice cores read: 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11640-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-rising-as-temperatures-fell/#ixzz6DfwOCERV

 

 

COVID-19 outbreak in the UK and London as of 10th March 2020

Updated information on the number of cases is released daily in the morning around 9am.

London is so far the most affected area in the country with 91 confirmed cases. The borough counting most cases is the one of  Kensington and Chelsea with 13 infected people.

London COVID-19 cases (10th March 2020)

Overall in the UK have been registered 373 cases and details per geographical area are provided using the Upper Tier Local Authorities (UTLA) mapping.
Daily, Public Health England provides data on the disease outbreak using the ArcGIS software by Esri, the same application used by John Hopkins University to track the growth of cases at global level.

Tracking coronavirus cases

To learn more:
NHS page
Prime Minister'statement (9th march 2020)