{"title":"To save lives: Lessons of a pandemic cartographer","authors":"John Hessler","doi":"10.1111/tran.12703","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"For almost everyone in the world, the last few years have been unlike any experienced in their lifetimes. The public health crisis, spawned by the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus and the outbreak of COVID‐19, presented a geospatial analysis challenge like none other as public health officials, emergency rooms, and the general public struggled to track the spread of the disease, allocate resources for testing and care, and understand the origin of this new zoonotic pathogen. During this period, the combination of rapid and open access genomic data combined with case counts and the mapping tools of geographic information systems allowed for near real‐time tracking of the pandemic. This paper describes these tools, how they were used to advise policy‐makers in the US at the height of the pandemic, and some of the lessons learned.","PeriodicalId":48278,"journal":{"name":"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12703","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"GEOGRAPHY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
For almost everyone in the world, the last few years have been unlike any experienced in their lifetimes. The public health crisis, spawned by the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus and the outbreak of COVID‐19, presented a geospatial analysis challenge like none other as public health officials, emergency rooms, and the general public struggled to track the spread of the disease, allocate resources for testing and care, and understand the origin of this new zoonotic pathogen. During this period, the combination of rapid and open access genomic data combined with case counts and the mapping tools of geographic information systems allowed for near real‐time tracking of the pandemic. This paper describes these tools, how they were used to advise policy‐makers in the US at the height of the pandemic, and some of the lessons learned.
期刊介绍:
Transactions is one of the foremost international journals of geographical research. It publishes the very best scholarship from around the world and across the whole spectrum of research in the discipline. In particular, the distinctive role of the journal is to: • Publish "landmark· articles that make a major theoretical, conceptual or empirical contribution to the advancement of geography as an academic discipline. • Stimulate and shape research agendas in human and physical geography. • Publish articles, "Boundary crossing" essays and commentaries that are international and interdisciplinary in their scope and content.