OGC Seeking Information Concerning The Capture And Use Of Spatial Data During Health Emergencies

The Health SDI CDS will support the development of a Health Emergencies Data Model and the design of a Health Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). Responses are due by the 29th of January, 2021.

The ongoing difficulties with acquiring and operationalizing data associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have provided a strong impetus for OGC to mobilize its community of global expertise to find practical solutions. Data collected at different levels of government is often neither standardized, integrated, nor interoperable. Monitoring of critical supply chains has proven an enormous challenge during this pandemic and, as such, there have been severe shortages of vital equipment for protracted periods of time. Patient data is often not digitized and geocoded at first contact with the health system - for example, at test sites - making precision mapping and analysis of disease spread almost impossible. Health infrastructure data has not been comprehensively assembled, hindering the development of situational awareness and a common operating picture.

A Health SDI designed to address these issues, then extended to support other kinds of diseases and health problems, will raise the efficiency and effectiveness of health services, saving lives, protecting the public, and saving money.

This RFI starts from the premise that spatially enabled data is essential to increase the preparedness for, mitigate the impacts of, and support the responses to major health emergencies, due to its inherent ability to facilitate data integration, interoperability, analytics, and modeling.