E-books & White Papers

6 Defeating Polio in Iraq The challenge The outbreak of polio in Syria and Iraq in late 2013 and early 2014 was described by a United Nations spokesperson as "arguably the most challenging outbreak in the history of polio eradication." Polio, a highly contagious disease that primarily afflicts children younger than age five, can lead to partial and sometimes fatal paralysis. The solution Surveys are designed to show whether vulnerable populations, such as internally displaced persons and refugees, are effectively reached. Collected data helps identify gaps—unvaccinated children and reasons for not vaccinating as well as hard-to-reach or unsecure areas. It locates primary healthcare centers, districts, and provinces responsible for children who did not receive the vaccination. Instead of paper surveys, which can take weeks to collect and process, the WHO field team in Iraq gathered real-time data using Survey123 for ArcGIS®, a mobile app from Esri. Survey123 for ArcGIS is a simple and intuitive form-centric data- gathering solution that makes it easy to create, share, and analyze surveys. "Survey123 enables us to analyze and share data on a daily basis for action and follow up the next day by the Ministry of Health," said Wasan Al-Tamimi, a WHO technical officer. The outcome The app was installed on 150 Android® tablets (it also works on iOS and Windows devices). WHO survey teams reported on their experience with Survey123 for ArcGIS saying the app is user friendly, easy to handle, and simplifies data transmission. The team collected more than 60,000 polio surveys using Survey123 for ArcGIS and extended their use of the app to assess the cholera immunization campaign. According to Ravi Shankar, a technical officer at WHO headquarters, WHO offices in other countries have expressed interest in using Survey123 for ArcGIS in future field deployment activities. DeKalb County: Maps Locate Brighter Future for Homeless The challenge DeKalb County's Community Development Department provides affordable housing resources to the more than 700,000 residents who call the region home. Every other January, teams of hundreds of volunteers embark on an overnight mission to locate and count unsheltered homeless people living in DeKalb County, Georgia. Their goal: identify people in need and provide them with available resources to get back on their feet. The homeless Point-in-Time (PIT) count is mandated every two years by HUD and is fulfilled locally throughout the country. In preparation for DeKalb County's 2015 PIT count, the Community Development Department, in collaboration with Pathways Community Network Institute, planned to execute the census in the traditional fashion: equip boots-on-the-ground teams with paper surveys, pencils and clipboards. Volunteers would collect hundreds of data points about homeless persons, and then workers would manually enter the information from the paper surveys into spreadsheets. The data would take three or more full days to enter, and once complete, the team would have to cross-check the spreadsheet with volunteers' handwritten notes for errors. It was a lot of work, a lot of time and not efficient. The solution Initially in search of volunteers, the team consulted with the county's GIS department. What transpired was an idea to modernize the outdated paper survey by using the Esri ArcGIS platform and apply geography to discover new insights about homeless populations. The GIS team created a custom mobile application using GeoForm, an ArcGIS web application template. The mobile app digitized the original survey and introduced new information layers. Instead of handwriting demographic data and block-level location points of unsheltered people, volunteers entered the information via cell phones. They used the app to quickly enter demographic data in a custom form, upload photos and notes, and pinpoint the exact location of each surveyed person. Teams analyzed the information in real time with live web maps and determined where to dispatch additional volunteers to high-need areas. The outcome The ArcGIS platform helped volunteers collect reliable information faster and geolocate approximately 200 unsheltered homeless people down to the street level. The data was instantly available in spreadsheets and web maps, saving the county time and money by eliminating hours of manual data entry. Community development confirmed existing data on where unsheltered people live and located new people in need of housing assistance. DeKalb County can now employ the ArcGIS platform to track population patterns and trends over time to plan where and when to allocate services. With plans to expand the department's use of GIS, outreach workers are already utilizing the data to get people in need a home of their own. Building Healthy Communities with Data Collection and GIS

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