Location intelligence provides a valuable lens for COVID-19response—exploring the dynamic connections between people, their health and well-being, and changing physical and social environments.
When the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19a pandemic, director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the situation would worsen. Yet, he noted, this is the first world pandemic that can be controlled, in part due to global connectivity and awareness. The controllability of COVID-19can be attributed to tools that quantify data inputs—and aggregate information about who and when in the context of where. Geographic information system (GIS) technology underpins mapping dashboards and provides the means to investigate and understand the spread, guide control measures, and assess strategies for COVID-19response.
Health analysts are using GIS to track the situation. At Seoul National University, a spatiotemporal epidemiologist named Hwang Seung-sik was able to determine that someone known as “Patient 31″became a superspreader in South Korea. This patient infected fellow members of a church, and this gave rise to 60percent of the country’s current cases.
Epidemiologists use GIS and datasets to link the interactions of infected people—mapping such things as credit card transactions and mobile phone location traces to see where an infected person has been and who they may have come in contact with. GIS also aids investigations into social networks to see and assess the spread within groups.
From a more granular perspective, investigators use GIS to map boundaries around areas of known infection to trace who may have been exposed to infection and how transportation routes, for example, could compound the spread. The same location intelligence tools help authorities find and get in touch with people who entered an infected person’s orbit so that they can quarantine themselves to limit further infections.
GIS mapping can understand at-risk populations geographically. For example, census data informs us of the demographic makeup of a community and GIS provides the means to home in on the locations of populations at increased risk, such as senior communities and popular retirement destinations. By seeing concentrations of vulnerable populations, health organizations can pinpoint COVID-19response—taking control measures such as ramping up hygiene and social distancing efforts and screening people on-site prior to entry.
Epidemiologists use GIS modelling to forecast and visualize the changing rates of disease and its spread across space and time.
Most hospitals regularly communicate their capacities to policy makers, and GIS tools help them monitor diminishing capacity and compare it against increasing infection rates, allowing real-time shuffling of resources to boost capacity where COVID-19response is needed most.
GIS also has a role to play in assessing the supply chain to provision these facilities with required supplies.
Officials can use GIS maps to see whether certain actions have changed the virus’s spread among specific populations or locations. Disease distribution maps display a point for each case and show changes to counts and rates across time. By visualizing the intensity of infections, health care professionals and policy makers can confront difficult decisions about ramping up or dialling back control measures.
Monitoring and even simulating interventions based on other approaches may help quell the infection rate. This action proved useful in tracking the spread of the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone to reveal the importance of quarantine efforts.
For policy makers and emergency responders, maps are one of the most efficient ways to communicate, assess, and understand the scope and scale of unfolding events.
As authorities move from monitoring and assessing the global movements of the virus to COVID-19response, GIS provides many capabilities to make the most of limited resources in order to safeguard community health.
GIS Solutions (Private) Limited was appointed by Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI) as its sole Distributor for Sri Lanka. GIS Solutions is a group company of the Just In Time Group founded in 1996.
GIS Solutions provides end-to-end Geo Information Systems software solutions based on the ArcGIS platform in Sri Lanka and the only GIS Software provider in Sri Lanka that fully supports its customers through a dedicated support team of technical experts who are contactable around the clock.
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