Photo By Staff Sgt. Milton Hamilton | The GeoBase Team from the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s...... read more read more
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The GeoBase Team from the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s Detachment 4 created a coronavirus disease 2019 application for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa to track COVID-19 throughout Europe and Africa.
The Geospatial tools provided by Det 4 give commanders almost immediate data about COVID-19 in their area of responsibility.
“The COVID-19 Dashboard has provided near real-time updates on the patterns and spread of the coronavirus within the USAFE-AFAFRICA theater of operations, identifying patterns and data on a much smaller scale,” said Anthony Adduci, AFIMSC Det 4, GeoBase geographer.
In addition to providing countrywide case data, the COVID-19 dashboard supplies information at the regional and local levels.
“The COVID-19 dashboard identifies specific areas within a country with a higher or lower incidence of COVID-19 cases,” Adduci said. “In addition, through collection of population data, it provides information on cumulative cases, active cases, cases per 100,000 people and cases within the last 24 hours. This data is displayed as a current value and displayed for the previous five days, providing more data to decision makers and public health officials.”
Without the creation of the COVID-19 tracking tool, USAFE-AFAFRICA would have exhausted time and resources from other equally important mitigation concerns to obtain the data.
“The COVID-19 viewer, daily maps and geography portable documents format (PDF) have centralized data and information for release to the respective agencies, freeing up individuals who would otherwise be collecting this data to concentrate more on the recovery and continuity of operations associated with this pandemic,” Adduci said.
The framework for Det 4’s work was already in place. In early January, a collaborative venture between the Air Force Surgeon General’s Office and the Air Force Civil Engineer Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, Texas, led to the first Air Force COVID-19 dashboard, an interactive data visualization tool that could be used to track, analyze and report information about the virus.
In early March, Lt. Col. Kerry Lewis, USAFE-AFAFRICA bioenvironmental engineer, contacted Det 4 for help with creating a way to track and report COVID-19 information.
Detachment 4’s geospatial team created two tools, GeoPDF and a COVID-19 map viewer for the dashboard which upgraded its information gathering and output capabilities.
GeoPDF is a software-generated exportable geospatial map. Instead of just looking at a single-layer map, users can view multiple data layers by switching them on or off.
“Once the need for support to the Office of the Command Surgeon was identified, the project started almost immediately,” Adduci said. “The COVID-19 viewer, daily map products, and GeoPDF are a great advantage. They provide a wealth of information to users with varying formats in order to provide the best possible resource for our customers.”
The GeoPDF software is critical in order to accommodate customers that need access to the dashboard, but do not have common access card privileges.
“GeoPDF software, which combines the power of map products, enables the customer to click on a region and have the COVID-19 data pop up within the PDF document completely independent of a network connection,” Adduci said. “By providing a wide range of products that can be utilized both within the U.S. Air Force platform as well as externally with very little additional effort, we are able to provide a uniformed product with uniformed data composed of research and collection from official government sources.”
The information gathered for the COVID-19 dashboard is taken from the official ministry of health sources.
“Areas that were previously only represented by a countrywide case count have now been broken down into local or country regional areas,” said Adduci. “This has made the data more detailed and accurate, and Lt. Col. Edward Walters, Office of the Command Surgeon Medical Counter (WMD) operations chief, has provided excellent leadership and shaped priorities related to our troops in the field.”
Since the initial data collection on March 17, Det 4 has improved the level of detail of data collection through the life-cycle of the project between the USAFE-AFAFRICA Office of the Command Surgeon and AFIMSC Det 4 GeoBase.
“Our goal is simple,” said Walters. “To provide one website - one common sight picture, to assist U.S. Europe Command leaders and commanders in making informed risk management decisions to protect their personnel while minimizing mission impact,” said Walters.
(Information for this article provided by AFIMSC Public Affairs)
| Date Taken: | 05.21.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 05.21.2020 04:19 |
| Story ID: | 370485 |
| Location: | RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, RHEINLAND-PFALZ, DE |
| Web Views: | 234 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, COVID-19 ops: Det 4 expands USAFE-AFAFRICA capabilities, by SSgt Milton Hamilton, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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