Coping with COVID-19 Challenges

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) component needed a better way of gathering and visualizing metrics used for reporting COVID-19 data. In the early days of the pandemic, federal agency staff were manually responding to data calls using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Manual data submission is inherently time-consuming and error-prone. Further, the delays in receiving current data and then reviewing in a tabular format thwarted the client’s need for timely situational awareness. The DHS component asked the Geospatial Management Office (GMO) to create a way to ingest COVID-19 data dynamically and deliver tools that could enhance executive leadership decision making during a rapidly evolving pandemic.

Ardent Answers the Call

Team Ardent tapped into their Esri ArcGIS Enterprise and Python Scripting expertise to create the following innovations:

• Automated the ingest of DHS component data into the Geospatial Information Infrastructure (GII).
• Integrated previously unavailable analysis tools and created real-time data visualizations in a single, dynamic dashboard.
• cripted data exports to automate updates to the data layers incorporated in the operations dashboard.
• Created filters to answer ad hoc questions.

The Outcome

From nothing to nationwide operations dashboard in 2 weeks! — In less than two weeks we enhanced the DHS component’s mission capability by: • Delivering real-time reporting of the latest COVID-19 data in an operations dashboard now used extensively by the client’s executive leadership to inform better decision making.

• Making spatial patterns more readily apparent by presenting data in a map format.
• Producing more accurate data with improved fidelity.
• Reducing level of effort by eliminating manual entry into spreadsheets.
• Validating and establishing Esri ArcGIS Enterprise compatibility with WebEOC, an industry standard emergency management application.

“Kudos to Ardent for collaborating with the government to develop and field a geospatial dashboard for the operations center and senior leaders….This effort went from conception to operational in a mere two weeks! BRAVO ZULU “WELL DONE!” – DHS Deputy Director

.Tools used to achieve these outcomes:

• WebEOC • Esri ArcGIS Enterprise
• Esri Dashboards
• Python
• Portal for ArcGIS
• Esri Feature Services
• Windows Server 2016