Tag: Federal Emergency Management Agency

Using location data in the fight against COVID-19
San Francisco, captured by HERE’s 3D mapping technology. (Image: HERE)

In 1854, English physician John Snow mapped the London cholera epidemic to determine the exact location of a contaminated water pump on Broad Street, pioneering the use of location mapping and data to manage public health crises.

Today, governments and public health officials are utilizing location data to help fight the COVID-19 global pandemic. Location data and maps are at the frontlines to aid emergency responders and healthcare providers, while GIS professionals, data scientists and many others rely on maps and location data to allocate supplies, manpower and assets where they are needed most.

Data as a source of truth

Location data has been one of the most valuable tools to guide crisis response. By referencing professionally managed, comprehensive geospatial databases, public health officials are able to precisely locate key medical and emergency resources, including hospitals, medical centers, medical and emergency services, pharmacies, and food and water distribution centers.

For example, the HERE location platform continually validates the freshness and features of its map through thousands of data sources. This includes field-collected data, third-party data from government sources, and crowdsourced data from expert communities. Taken together, the process rapidly delivers clear, timely location information to end-users such as key medical stakeholders.

It is critical that all levels of government — local, state and federal — have access to these types of valuable datasets during times of emergency. In response to the pandemic, we have seen incredible agility from facilities that have been converted to provide critical medical services.

For example, the Javits Center in New York City has been used as a field hospital, a sports facility has been converted into a drive-through testing center, and schools are being used to distribute food. By tracking these updates, authorities have real-time awareness of these facilities and their availability to provide services.

Use Case #1

Social distancing efficacy

At this stage of the pandemic, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has tapped into location data to track the efficacy of social distancing policies and the spread of the virus. It’s valuable to map the virus’s spread for many reasons, but a few key reasons include:
- Predicting the movement of COVID-19. By mapping the spread, we can proactively align the medical supply chain behind these predictions.
- Understanding the effectiveness of social distancing. Social distancing is one of the most powerful ways to stop the spread of the virus. By tracking the efficacy of these measures and regulations and ensuring that citizens are complying with shelter in place, we’re able to predict how we are able to slow or flatten the spread.
- Predicting the economic impact. As we consider reopening America for business, it’s important to understand where the virus is most prevalent, and the timeline for recovery.
Use Case #2

The strained medical supply chain

The coronavirus has caused strain across most industry supply chains, but most notably, the medical supply chain. Medical resources, including hospital beds, masks and life-saving ventilators have become scarce and unevenly distributed.

In times of crisis, with thousands of lives at stake and the potential for further economic fallout, it’s critical that public health officials are equipped with authoritative, comprehensive datasets to guide decision-making. When organizations are equipped with this valuable data, they can harness the power of location data for good and follow in the footsteps of the location data pioneer John Snow.
June 25, 2020
Esri releases resources for businesses during COVID-19

Esri has created and released a suite of resources to help businesses like commercial organizations, government agencies and utilities maintain operational continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Esri, these resources are designed to help organizations understand the current status of their operations and employees, analyze relative community risk to COVID-19 and create business strategies for moving forward.

The four released resources include the Coronavirus Business Continuity solution, impact planning for COVID-19, the Health and Medical Lifeline: COVID-19 Risk Model and county-level COVID-19 case data.

The Coronavirus Business Continuity solution includes configurable apps and surveys to enable organizations to track the status and location of their employees and facilities throughout the supply chain and communicate that information with internal and external stakeholders.

Impact planning for COVID-19 provides a snapshot of every U.S. county, including daily updates on each county’s COVID-19 cases and data on population vulnerability, hospital beds and more.

The Health and Medical Lifeline: COVID-19 Risk Model from the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranks counties by high, medium and low risk for COVID-19 vulnerability and risk.

Finally, county-level COVID-19 case data from Johns Hopkins University provides real-time intelligence into where infections are spreading and might impact operational continuity.

These resources, along with others, can be found at Esri’s COVID-19 GIS Hub site.

Check out more of GPS World‘s coronavirus coverage here.

April 3, 2020
NASA program aids with disaster relief efforts

Satellite imagery and mapping have proven to be critical technologies when it comes to disaster relief efforts.

The NASA Earth Science Disasters Program has harnessed these technologies to help communities and governments recover from natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and more.

“[The goal of the program is to] try to prevent natural disasters or limit their impact and also help people recover from them more quickly,” Jeremy Kirkendall, senior GIS administrator for the NASA Disasters Program, told GPS World in an exclusive interview at the 2019 Esri User Conference in San Diego. “We provide the products free to anyone to use, and data is only available if there is a good satellite pass.”

When a natural disaster strikes, researchers at the NASA Disasters Program will take satellite imagery of the affected location and create a map to show what the area looks like from an aerial perspective. Authorities who request this information can then compare the disaster map with maps of what the area looked like before the disaster took place.

“We do take requests from agencies or governments for disasters if they need help if data is available,” Kirkendall said. “We’ll create the products that show where the earthquake damage happened, where the fire burned or where the flooding is, and then users take that — combined with their local information — to determine what needs to be checked.”

For example, the NASA Disasters Program was able to map out the magnitude 6.4 July 4 Southern California earthquake.

“The earthquake that happened on July 4 caused a lot of deformation to the ground, so we mapped out that surface deformation and shared that information with other emergency managers, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Guard and U.S. Navy,” Kirkendall said. “You can look at things like roads, utilities, underground pipes for natural gas or geothermal wells, or fiberoptic cables. Then when you provide the product to these end users, they can overlay it with utility and infrastructure information to identify what’s the most at risk and what needs to be investigated.”

Sometimes, when a natural disaster occurs over a longer period of time, data is mapped throughout the duration of the occurrence, as well. This can help with search-and-rescue missions, infrastructure repairs and post-disaster analysis.

“We will create products during responses that can last a long time, like for Hurricane Florence or the flooding that recently happened in the Midwest,” Kirkendall said. “We’ll keep turning out flood products day after day when there’s good satellite passes that show that information.”

Kirkendall added that the National Guard has used the live data, along with 911 calls, to find individuals trapped in flooded houses. The data also serves as a tool for post-disaster analysis to understand where damage occurred, ways to fix it and how to prevent it from happening again.

“The program itself is gearing toward a resiliency effort, where we can provide these products when communities says, ‘We get flooded here all the time, over and over,’” Kirkendall said. “That’s where we need to be prepared to fix something. We need to do something to prevent that.”

July 24, 2019