COVID-19 Big Data Highlight New Environmental Research Frontiers and Current Spotlights

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) brought unprecedented challenges to public health authorities, healthcare workers, and scientific researchers around the globe. In the past two years, environmental scientists around the world conducted extensive amounts of research focusing on the environmental transmission and persistence of the novel coronavirus, as well as the reverse impact of COVID-19 on the environment by the changing human behavoirs. This vast and growing body of scientific literature provides invaluable references for decision-makers, yet it also presents a daunting task for one to acquire the essential knowledge for decision-making or to find major gaps to prioritize future research efforts. Data science offers efficient tools for scientists and policy-makers to cope with the need to harness the wealth of information from what is becoming the largest collection of scientific publications on a human pandemic in history. We highlight the prospective use of data-driven tools to gain quick insights into current findings and scholarly opinions to aid in the decision-making and the development of effective and environmentally sustainable solutions for infection prevention and control of COVID-19. The application of data analytics on scientific publications is expected to have an increasingly important role in future decision-making and research prioritization when tackling grand challenges in the future uncertain world.