- Strategy and Management
- 6 min read
How enterprises are using GIS to track Covid-19 impact
GIS technology has been utilitilized by varied set of industry verticals for decades. But can the same technology help enterprises assess the impact of Coronavirus? In a conversation with ETCIO, Esri President Agendra Kumar talks about how the company is helping enterprises in these tough times with decision support by offering them free access to their latest tool ArcGIS Hub
How GIS technology can help in tracking the spread of COVID?
Geographic understanding is essential in detecting, understanding and responding to any infectious disease outbreak specifically in pandemics such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). GIS helps epidemiologists to map disease occurrence against multiple parameters including demographics, the environment, geographies and past occurrences to understand the origin of outbreaks, its spread pattern and its intensity to implement control, preventive, and surveillance measures. Public health agencies, policy makers and administrators need GIS to understand outbreak patterns in real-time to identify at-risk populations and plan targeted intervention such as evaluate available facilities or increase healthcare capacities. In addition, there is a need for effective communication among other supporting agencies and citizens to ensure a coordinated response.
With location as a common denominator, Geographic Information System (GIS) technology provides the capability to enable this common operating picture for multi-agency collaboration. Using GIS capabilities such as spatial analytics, mapping, and location intelligence, health officials and government agencies can map confirmed and active cases, fatalities, and recoveries to identify where COVID-19 infections have occurred.
Time-enabled maps can reveal how infections spread over time and where you may want to target interventions. COVID-19 disproportionally impacts certain demographics such as the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. Mapping social vulnerability, age, and other factors help you monitor at-risk groups and regions you serve.
Map facilities, employees or citizens, medical resources, equipment, goods, and services to understand and respond to current and potential impacts of COVID-19.
Use interactive Web maps, dashboard apps, and StoryMaps to help rapidly communicate your situation.
Which organizations are currently using Esri technology to manage the COVID-19 data?
COVID-19 outbreak has escalated very rapidly across the globe. Esri is working with various government agencies around the world and bodies such as World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centres for Disease Control & Prevention (CDCP) to help them leverage GIS technology to make decisions, plan and communicate various measures to control the spread of pandemic.
In India, we are supporting various government agencies like National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and departments in states like – UP, Jharkhand, Odisha, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, to name a few. Few municipal corporations and NGOs are also using Esri technology in the country to map the spread of COVID-19.
What initiatives is Esri India taking in supporting such organizations?
As a part of our global Disaster Response Program, we are providing the ArcGIS Hub Coronavirus Response template at no cost through a complimentary six-month ArcGIS Online subscription with ArcGIS Hub. ArcGIS Hub is a framework to build a website to visualize and analyse the crisis in the context of an organization or community’s population and assets. The template includes examples, materials, and configurations to rapidly deploy ArcGIS Hub environment.
In addition, Esri India has formed a country-wide task-force that is working with various government departments and agencies to support them in configuration of the ArcGIS Hub template and integrating their data sources such as MIS or APIs from NCDC, WHO, data about administrative boundaries, health facilities and their capacities and other data for their decision support.
What is the authenticity of the data which is provided on Esri platform?
In context of COVID-19, agencies are integrating data from multiple sources for operational intelligence. Real-time data APIs from expert organisations and government bodies such as World Health Organisation (WHO) and Centres for Disease Control & Prevention (CDCP) are being integrated for a global perspective of the pandemic.
In India, National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), an institute established to function as a national centre of excellence for control of communicable diseases by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is providing the authoritative data via APIs. NCDC is internally collating the latest data from various state health departments into their central MIS system as per the defined data model for tracking and managing the pandemic.
Both these data are being combined by agencies with their relevant area of interest data such as hospitals, location of cases being reported, affected areas, capacities and demographic data to derive strategies as per their focus administrative boundaries.
How are you updating these datasets?
The reported cases and their location datasets are being collated by NCDC in their MIS system from various state health departments as per the defined data model for tracking and managing the pandemic. Agencies are combining this with their own authoritative data for decision making.
How has GIS worked in previous such outbreak of diseases
GIS based maps and analysis has been used effectively by epidemiologists and various supporting agencies like WHO, UNICEF, CDC and more in understanding the outbreak controlling the spread of Ebola and Zika through informed decision making. In India, institutes like National Institute of Malaria Research (NIMR) have been using GIS for tracking vector borne disease outbreaks such as Malaria and Dengue. In Polio eradication, GIS based apps were used to survey, map and analyse the reach of vaccination in the vulnerable population areas. This helped identify gaps - unvaccinated children, reasons for not vaccinating, hard-to-reach or unsecure areas including mapping primary healthcare centers, districts, and provinces responsible for children who did not receive the vaccination.
Which all verticals can leverage it? How and why?
GIS as a technology is already being used extensively across various industries across government, utilities, natural resource management, environment management, urban planning, public safety, emergency management, telecommunications, banking, insurance, retail, real estate and much more. GIS is the core technology for major mission mode programs in the country such as Smart Cities, Bharatmala, Sagarmala, Clean Ganga Mission and City Gas Distribution.
For example, GIS is being used for monitoring environmental change, a great challenge to our world today. Sea levels are rising, habitats are changing, and all these things are being mapped and analyzed using GIS. Organisations are using GIS to manage utilities such as telecommunication and power. It is being used to discover energy potential of various energy technologies, especially renewables such as geothermal, solar and wind. It is also being used for conservation and land use planning, roads and re-development planning and managing land cadastre. It is also being used to design future cities, multi-modal transportation systems and manage them, which not only means just managing roads, railways and air traffic, but also understanding the interaction between these different modes of transportation. Insurance companies are using GIS for crop insurance, risk management and the understand their customer demographics better for new product launches. Manufacturing organizations are using GIS to manage their supply chains and understand the risk of various factors to their businesses.
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