In May 2020, National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation and the Urban Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) joined forces with NSGIC to establish the National Pandemic GIS Task Force. Most recently, the Task Force brought in participants from National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the National Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO). The overarching goal set forth by the Pandemic GIS Task Force is to increase pandemic preparedness and unity of effort by enabling effective information sharing and use of location-enabled technology for informing critical decision making.

While GIS was front page news during the pandemic, GIS professionals across the country desired to make a more impactful contribution to the emergency. Most aspects of the pandemic are best understood in the context of space and time. This applies to local variation in the spread of the pandemic, its collective health impacts, and even the variations in vaccination rates.

This session will be an interactive conversation bringing together many of the organizations represented on the Task Force and the NSGIC community. Formal presentations and slides will be very limited. Instead, presenters will use an interview question and answer format. Participants can expect discussion topics ranging from the finding of pandemic after action survey and forums, to practical strategies for managing public health data, to privacy and data aggregation tactics.