THE USE GIS SYSTEMS IN THE PANDEMIC

One of the underlying technologies in several of the daily digital services people use
today is geographic information systems (GIS). More recently, it has been helping
governments tackle Covid-19. In three days time when Covid hit India for the first time,
ESRI helped several states establish a control room/dashboard for monitoring the pandemic
spread and containment. Today, National Disaster Management Authority, Meghalaya, Tamil
Nadu, Rajasthan, Bihar, Punjab, Karnataka, Ladakh and several other state governments use
GIS technology in tackling and monitoring Covid-19.

When disease can travel so quickly, information has to move even faster. The intense
response generated by the dashboard shows how eager people around the world are to track
health Threats.

Likewise we have so many national and international health organizations,

universities sharing their dashboards for proper information in the pandemic situation.
(https://covid19.who.int/region/searo/country/in , https://www.mygov.in/covid-19/ )

1. Applying Geographic Technology

Organizations have been using mapping for hundreds of years—and GIS in recent
decades—to understand the spread and impacts of epidemics. In this century, GIS has played
important roles in tracking and helping to contain corona virus. During the Ebola outbreak in
2013, government officials used GIS to site emergency treatment centers, manage bed
capacity, and coordinate response efforts. However, GIS use for COVID-19 has been the
most comprehensive and effective one to date.

The organizations that applied the geographic technology of GIS to COVID-19

ranged from local to international. The widespread use of GIS for COVID-19 response has
demonstrated the power of geospatial thinking and the scalability, speed, and insight provided
by GIS. More than simply mapping phenomena, GIS uses geography to furnish context for
events in a common reference system (CRS). Applying spatial analysis tools, GIS brings out
the relationships, patterns, and associations that are often hidden by the complexity of data.

Figure 1.Cumulative COVID-19 cases in the districts of India by October 31,

2020: (a) confirmed cases, (b) recovered cases, (c) deaths, and (d) active cases.

2. Existing GIS Implementations

One of the hallmarks of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the need for speed. Its
rapid spread requires not the perfect plan but an immediate one. That means actionable
information, not a flood of data. GIS has been critical to the ability of state and local
governments to react to the pandemic. Those that had robust, existing GIS implementations
have been well positioned to pull the best data together, analyze it, and rapidly respond.

For example, In Karnataka, the administrative body of the fourth largest municipal
corporation in India, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), has launched a GIS
based Command and Control center to cohesively plan, coordinate and execute various state
level actions initiated to contain the disease. The central command and control center is now
being used for all COVID-19 planning and response strategies across the state of Karnataka.
Around 45 smart city command and control centers have been turned into COVID-19 war
rooms and others are following the suite.
3. Recovery Needs a Geographic Context

While the COVID-19 pandemic was initially perceived as a public health crisis, its
effects are rippling through society and will be long-lived. COVID-19 is precipitating an
economic emergency that has effects both pervasive and growing. This secondary emergency
is enmeshed with other social challenges, notably widespread homelessness.

The interrelated nature of these two issues makes GIS the best framework for
holistically arriving at policies. ArcGIS tools and data can determine impacts on businesses
and the economic well-being of individuals. With a better idea of these conditions, different
levels of government can work together and coordinate efforts.

Regional economic recovery is going to be a collaborative process because the effects

of COVID-19 don’t neatly stop at city or county boundaries. Placing data in a geographic
context helps visualize relationships and perhaps new solutions. Collecting data will allow
predictive modeling and shape recovery. This crisis is an opportunity for collaboration and
building cooperation that could continue, limiting data hoarding and promoting reciprocal
data sharing.

4. A Framework for Understanding and Responding

GIS professionals across the world have applied GIS in responding swiftly and
decisively to the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrated just how valuable geospatial
thinking is. They showed that using a geographic framework for informing decisions is not
just applying technology but helping lead organizations to a better way of dealing not only
with emergencies but with day-to-day challenges.

For instance, as soon as the reports of first few cases of COVID-19 came out in the
southern state of Kerala in India, a team of health officials and the state disaster management
authorities worked on war footing to collate the entire surveillance data of the affected people
into live geo-maps, with each of the primary and secondary contacts traced, marked and
identified on the map. Another map shows the classification of high-risk and low-risk zones,
with focus on identifying the spread and possible on ground clusters of the possible expanse
of the disease.

Thousands of organizations that had not used GIS much or at all before the pandemic
have successfully stood up systems in response to COVID-19 and realized concrete benefits.