Using Geolocation Technology to Fight Covid-19 and Climate Change

IDB president Luis Alberto Moreno & Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, discuss how GIS can help solve some of the world’s biggest problems, namely, Covid-19 and climate change at the recent Esri Virtual User Conference 2020.

Luis: We were able to provide free access to technology for Covid-19. Esri’s disaster program is used in the Caribbean for the specific needs of IDB countries. Our governments are using Esri’s analytical models to identify where best to do an intervention. Johns Hopkins Covid-19 modeling receives 3 million hits an hour. IDB is working with Esri on several important projects, for example, tracking hospital beds, respirators and many other needs. They are also using GIS in Honduras.

Jack: This partnership with IDB has been very powerful enabling our technology to get up. Our main focus is to help users do their work better. We work on building in advance. This situation took everyone by surprise and we implemented technology quickly. This is a local issue. The main focus is to create understanding. GIS technology is an understanding technology that helps you understand processes. In this case it’s done by grad students. Johns Hopkins put the system together as a dashboard, using the  best open source data, assembled it in a dashboard and published it. The world grew to understand what was going on via this dashboard.

WHO wanted a dashboard like that for themselves so we made if for them. There were millions of maps being made every day. A modest means person was able to assemble data and change the world with the dashboard.

People saw the world through a map, the science of geography, integrative science through a map. All the science came together through this visual medium. Once that happened, ministries of health could take a feed and mix it with their own data of cases. So it started with understanding the information. They could understand it locally but also how it trended. Once they got the pattern of geograph, seeing how it spreads, the epicurves, seeing how to forecast, and capacities of hospitals according to what the curve is going to do also to forecast and put patients in hospitals and/or close down the economy, it became a framework for policy for people to understand and act appropriately.

It’s one of the great achievements to watch geography come alive and become a central focus for how we understand and manage our world.

Luis – People wonder when they go back to the office and when children go back to school? We do a 7 day moving average of how cases are moving. How do we use GIS to think through how to go back to the office?

Jack: We don’t know what the hell is going on. The Governor of California is caught between two difficult decisions. A lot of decision making has to do with capacity of hospitals, and there’s the issue of variability based on location. We’re discovering that policies about staying closed down, influence the spread of disease. Opening up causes more disease. Politicians are in a difficult situation. We can see the cell phone moving around as people move around and we see disease break out. Certain hotspots show up like Bogota or Buenos Aires, and in spite of that some companies or offices want to bring some people back, but they have to bring them back carefully, which requires social distancing policies. We have 4,500 employees in the U.S. and the same amount outside the U.S., because we can work remotely. There are some companies who really want to bring it back. We have an indoor GIS system. We can look and assess different systems about proximity association of people. Office hoteling is an option:  move in and out of an office for a few days a week, sharing and cleaning in between. We’ve been able to build a model and visualize these and make them available.

We’re working at the mega and microscale. States or nations come up with policies, inside with a business, dealing with human lives and unknowns, but I also realize the importance of keeping businesses open. We are fortunate we can operate digitally and at a distance.

Luis: Because of data sets you produce you look at the economics profession; datasets set in time, with live data you begin to think of solutions. Looking at datasets I produced I think that is going to revolutionize how we make wiser decisions in different professions.

The public sector demand data driven policy making and decision making. It brings up a lot of issues about transparency – being able to be transparent in the context of data driven policy. Every movement is tracked, every change in forestry, every tree that’s lost in the Amazon can be measured within a day or two. From a policy perspective people may try to hide that. SDGs with the UN are highlighting this, measuring within the SDG frame change, whether economic, environmental, and are made available in dashboards. This is not all together yet but the UN is active in making this occur.

Jack: If people see the world like they did with Covid, the world is a living world and we’re part of it and we’re changing and evolving. A generation of kids learn geography at an early age and we’re part of a larger ecological system that will cause social transformation. They must demand of their leadership that they make the right decisions in geography and communicate them.

Rational spatial mapping became available through President Obama, who had a holistic understanding of where the needs are. Economics and geography have never gotten along. We care about forecast with literacy. The lack of spatial literacy in economics have led to innaccuracies. Jeffrey Sachs understands this. It took him 20 years! Bolivia has high elevation and no seaports. It is handicapped, seen through the lens of geography. I want economics to get the science of relationships. The bank needs this lens as well – to combine the sociological challenge we have.

Luis: The big equalizer is that digital literacy has increased significance, and we have no option but to learn.  We are moving into some kind of hybrid system.

Jack: The cost of externalities – in economics they optimize for one sector and then they ignore the rest and say external influence. Geography brings this all together holistically.  You can do it holistically by putting all costs together into one holistic modeling capability.

Education is about building the next generation of spatially literate children. Geography brings all sciences together into a whole.

We have been experimenting with kids in K-12 and helping kids in 5^th or 6^th  grade become spatially literate, and give them GIS tools for spatially based learning. They look at a problem in their neighborhood, develop a program using maps to target the area of need. In Detroit, they worked on finding lead paint in neighborhoods and then joined together to get rid of all the lead paint. All of them became more literate, went to college, and got a degree.

They learned all about economics, and different neighborhoods, and geography through the lead project.

There are ¼ million students in the country, and now through the rest of the world, where every K-12 school can get access to our cloud-based tools anywhere in the world. They can build curriculum in various languages to address this work.

There isn’t the leadership overseas to transform as we do in the U.S. However, we are making stuff easier to learn and more accessible. It is helpful to have a geo-mentor, and/or adopt a teacher to help them to get going. Once kids get a sense of what this is about, they get excited and work on their own.

11,000 universities around the world use Esri GIS. Teachers aren’t keeping up with the technology. Kids in Detroit learned computing on their own, they learned math, communications skills and for $300,000 the city could hire kids to scrape off lead paint. They learned how to become citizens and participate in democracy. This is what we call “Project based learning.”

STEM is integral in this.

SDG statistical reporting to the UN from some countries to create a global view.

Luis: Why are we not seeing more GIS in traditional media in Haiti?

Jack: Some of it is happening but some shifted over to the web. Dashboards and maps are showing what’s going on with Covid. Covid is one example; the economic wave comes as a result of Covid, then climate change, then loss of biodiversity waves. I see it that it is going to rob us of our future, there’s a movement to set aside 50% of the planet and keep it in a state so we can be sustained.

Understanding precedes action, and understanding language precedes action.

Luis: Climate change has been here a long time, in terms of the health of our oceans. What is GIS capable of doing to help with those problems?

Jack: GIS helps us understand the problem and communicate the problem. The geographic target is diversity, stimulate NGOs and governments to put areas in conservation. We are targeting the most important areas. We need to go to a no-carbon society. We must move to sustainable energy usage in our society. Stop polluting, use maps to create broader understanding.

With urban mobility all capitals in Latin America are challenged. We need to find out how you’re helping have better traffic, and better ways for mayors to deal with urban mobility and pollution.

We’re wiring up everything that moves and changes, making better decisions about better transportation alternatives,  work with trucking companies, Fedex, UPS,  $400 million using tools to optimize routes and supply chains will be critical. Every bit helps.

We have put machine learning and AI in our main product. All GIS users should be able to have them, with forecasts and statistical analysis available.

Luis: What can you say about your leadership?

Jack: I can tell you how I think. I grew up in a poor family. My family were servants, so part of me is about being in service. In service you think about others and how you can help them. Part of my DNA is being interested but not interesting.

The purpose of Esri is that it is important to be in service to our users. It is a purpose driven company. The purpose of our organization is that I want to be in service to things that matter.

We have never borrowed money because then we’d be in service to the banks. It frees me from the burdens of stockholders, and allows me to focus on the fundamental platform science based development and quality engineering. We pay everyone well here.

It’s going to take all our technology, and people who are creative to move into action to solve these problems. At Esri, we have a sense of people who are interested in doing something for the world.

Tags: air pollution, ArcGIS, climate change, cloud, data, ESRI, geospatial, GIS, GPS, Haiti, health, imagery, indoor mapping, Infrastructure, intelligence, laser scanner, LiDAR, location, mapping, maps, mobile, mobile mapping, navigation, satellite imagery

Categories: 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21/CMP11), 3D Cities, 3D designs, agriculture, airports, analytics, ArcGIS, ArcGIS Earth, ArcGIS Online, ArcPad, asset management, Big Data, citizen science, climate change, cloud, Covid-19, data, disaster relief, drones, emergency response, Esri, field GIS, geospatial, GIS, government, GPS, handhelds, indoor location technology, laser radar, lidar, location based services, mapping, mobile, OGC, Open Source, remote sensing, resilient cities, satellite based tracking, satellite imagery, spatial data, UAS

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