Embedded Files
Data-Sharing Considerations
ArcGIS provides a detailed list of best practices for sharing data. Key items include:
Cost: Consider the financial resources of your priority audiences.
Findability: Ensure that the right audience can find your data.
Access: Validate sharing privileges and security settings are not prohibitive for your audience.
Shifting audiences: Your audience may change over time.
Authority: Show your audience that your data is trustworthy.
Tools
There are many ways to disseminate your data, ranging from developing a custom application to sharing a simple spreadsheet. Choose your platform with best practice considerations in mind.
Low or No Cost
Free options for sharing tabulated data include Google Drive, SharePoint, and OneDrive. Remember to adjust the visibility settings to ensure your audience can access your files. If you want your data available in search engine results, consider Google Sites, a free website builder with SEO (search engine optimization) capabilities and completely free. The GID DDT Toolkit is hosted using Google Sites.
The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) has developed open standards for online services that allow users to view, edit, process, and share geospatial data, as well as to incorporate data into maps, websites, and applications. QGIS Server and GeoServer are free and open-source software options for serving geospatial data according to OGC standards.
OGC has an extensive list of standards
Commercial
Esri's ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise are two additional platforms for sharing geospatial data, maps, and applications. ArcGIS Enterprise supports small single-machine and large multi-machine deployments of public and private cloud infrastructure, as well as on-premises infrastructure, while ArcGIS Online is solely web-based.
A comparison of the OGC standards implemented in QGIS, GeoServer, and ArcGIS Server can be found here.
While most users of Esri's software and services do pay subscription fees, Esri does offer free or low-cost software and technical support for short-term disaster response and to nonprofits. However, many state and local governments already have existing Esri subscriptions, so use of these commercial services during a response may not come with additional costs.
Applications
Whether you build an application or leverage an existing one, adding your data to a visualization tool can increase usability and impact. Examples include:
FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool (RAPT), enables users to analyze socio-demographic, infrastructure, and hazard data and consider how this information affects a jurisdiction’s likely needs following different types of disasters.
The page, COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Resources, has various visualization tools to help identify facilities, prioritize populations, analyze gaps, and manage vaccine inventory.
The Coronavirus Vaccine Outreach solution leverages an ArcGIS Hub
GeoDatabase Schema
Given multiple platform uses, there isn't always a central, organized database to consult when responding to an emergency. Before an emergency, it's important to build and maintain an accurate geodatabase that can empower responders to make critical, data-informed decisions.
Esri provides a 1.5-hour on-demand tutorial on how to prepare a foundational geodatabase for a health emergency. Esri also compiled a list of geodatabase best practices, including tips about data ownership, data models, data configuration, geodatabase behaviors, data validation, extending, and performance.
Esri provides a 42-page presentation on geodatabase best practices.
Google Sites
Report abuse