Este Geraghty - Learning from COVID-19: GIS for Pandemics

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Learning from COVID-19: GIS for Pandemics (Applying GIS series)

Now that the health community is in a state of reflection, how do we put the lessons learned into practice?

Learning from COVID-19: GIS for Pandemics tells real-life stories about how spatial thinking became invaluable in both local and full-scale outbreaks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Geographic information systems (GIS) for real-time surveillance transformed possibly overwhelming data into location intelligence that provided agencies and civic leaders with valuable insights. The book also includes a next steps section that provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your own use of GIS. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book.

Edited by Dr. Este Geraghty, chief medical officer and health solutions director at Esri, and Matt Artz, an Esri content strategist.

Applying GIS

The Applying GIS series explains how to become a spatial thinker, with ideas and strategies for building location intelligence into your profession, industry, or discipline. Each pocket-size book is divided into relevant topic areas that include a set of case studies and a road map for getting started with GIS.

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Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed appreciation for the role that public health preparedness plays in keeping our communities safe. The hard lessons of the ongoing pandemic helped citizens better understand how the health of a community impacts all aspects of society. Beyond its tragic human toll, the pandemic has affected everything from the economy, transportation, and education to community design, infrastructure, and technology. Disparities in mortality rates and access to health care also emerged on the basis of race, ethnicity, and income. The scope and complexity of the crisis demonstrated that public health preparedness is a vital function. It requires careful planning and coordination across health organizations and beyond these to other members of our world ecosystem.

The global health community is in a state of reflection. As it steps back to examine the worldwide response to the pandemic, the health community cant help but be motivated to revisit health preparedness strategies and plans. Learning from COVID-19: GIS for Pandemics reviews the emerging lessons from the pandemic, including ways to improve our preparedness for the next health crisis.

The global response to COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, highlighted the need for health organizations to engage with a wider range of collaborators. It has elevated the value of situational dashboards for communicating health issues and supporting decision-making. The pandemic magnified the importance of having the right datasets and applications to support business continuity and the recovery of our communities. Looking forward from these lessons, we value the need for equity as we build resilience at individual, organizational, and societal levels.

Organizations that prepare for and respond to public health emergencies should formally and intentionally exploit every incident as a learning experience. Many already do. Each event presents unique challenges and requires specific responses; they dont occur in isolation. These events tend to follow repeatable patterns that organizations can anticipate and employ to create healthier communities.

We have a transformational opportunity, given the magnitude of this crisis and common challenges, to build on lessons learned in response to previous public health emergencies, such as the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak from 2002 to 2004, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2014 to 2016, and the Zika virus epidemic from 2015 to 2016. These past emergencies produced foundational datasets, tools, models, and information products to use and share. Instead of starting from scratch, the health community can adapt and advance existing plans in the context of COVID-19 for a new crisis.

A geographic information system (GIS) is often the foundation of these efforts, turning data into location intelligence that provides agencies and civic leaders with valuable insights. More than simply mapping phenomena, GIS uses geography to furnish context for events in a common reference system. Applying spatial analysis tools, GIS brings out relationships, patterns, and associations that are often hidden by the breadth and complexity of managing multiple data inputs. What makes GIS so critical is that it supports evidence-based decision-making.

This book highlights best practices, key GIS capabilities, and lessons learned during the COVID-19 response that can help health care organizations, responders, public health programs, educators, and communities prepare for the next crisis.

Humans are a resilient and adaptive species. Faced with armed conflicts, humanitarian tragedies, natural disasters, and health emergencies, we learn to look at situations in new ways and respond with innovation. The health community experienced this during the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced health professionals worldwide to review, rethink, and reimagine their health preparedness workflows. That spirit of invention often aligns closely with advances in technologies.