Albuquerque-based data analytics firm RS21 is helping local communities nationwide to rapidly identify their most-vulnerable populations as the coronavirus spreads across the country.
The company built interactive online maps in March to provide public officials, healthcare professionals and others in targeted cities with instant access to detailed information about local neighborhoods to help them make critical decisions on how to best allocate scarce resources and assistance during the pandemic.
The project started as a local initiative with initial maps for Albuquerque, Las Cruces and Santa Fe, but it quickly blossomed into a national service that now offers detailed maps for 500 cities around the U.S. The nationwide network went live on April 3, said RS21 President and CEO Charles Rath.
“We’re getting feedback from all over the country,” Rath said. “The demand is overwhelming. That’s why we rolled the maps out to all cities in the U.S.”
Users can tap on any city sector within the maps to pull-up community-specific information. That includes the local area’s number of residents over 65, the zone’s distance from the nearest medical facility, percentage of population lacking health insurance, and incidence of chronic diseases ranging from cancer, asthma, diabetes and heart disease to stroke, kidney disease, obesity and high blood pressure.
Based on that data and more, the map produces an “urban health vulnerability index” for each city sector to show which areas are most at-risk.
“As the coronavirus spreads, the need for smart resource allocation will grow,” Rath said. “Decision makers need to know geographically where the populations most affected are to design creative ways to get needed resources to them.”
The information on the maps, which are freely accessible to the public, is based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau.
“We’re seeing thousands of visitors using the maps around the country,” said RS21 communications manager Natalie Sommer. “It’s pretty good traffic for a tool we just developed. Our team is reaching out now to cities and states to assess how the maps can support local communities.”
The company has offered its maps and data analysis services to various federal agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security Procurement and Acquisition Innovation Response Team, Sommer said.
Community groups and public officials in other states are starting to tap the maps for local coronavirus response efforts.
Mooresville Schools in Indianapolis, a district just south of the city, is using them to determine which schools could serve as “spillover” sites to house hospital beds and medical equipment to alleviate pressure in nearby coronavirus hotspots, said Assistant Superintendent for Business Operations Jake Allen.
“We have large gyms we can use for hospitals,” Allen told the Journal. “We’re sharing the information in the maps with hospitals to help out. They have so much useful data in them that users can digest in an easy format.”
A group of independent journalists in San Francisco and Oakland, California, is using the maps to gather empirical data for insight and analysis in vulnerable communities in the Bay Area. The group will embed the maps into a new website to serve as a one-stop site for useful information on how the coronavirus is impacting local communities, with news videos, articles, infographics and dashboards, Sommer said.
Freelance journalist Solomon Moore said the group is still building the web platform.
“We are hoping to use RS21’s tool to inform Bay Area audiences and also inspire other journalism organizations to improve their presentation of factual information about the pandemic at the community level,” Moore told the Journal. “… What makes RS21’s tool so great is that it highlights what’s happening around the pandemic at the local level, which is really where we have a public information gap. It shows how pre-existing vulnerabilities in the population are exacerbating the process.”
RS21 is adding new information to the maps based on feedback from public officials. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, for example, requested that hospital and nursing home locations be added, encouraging the company to insert that data in all its maps nationwide.
Based on feedback from the City of Albuquerque, the company is adding information to show where Albuquerque Public Schools is handing out meals to students during school closures, and where city-sponsored WiFi hotspots are available for students, job-seekers and others who don’t have Internet at home to access free WiFi on mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones.
The ABQ BioPark is one such access point, Sommer said.
“Students can download homework assignments and job seekers can access job boards or upload applications while still practicing social distancing recommendations,” Sommer said. “People can use the map to find where to access WiFi on an individual and as-needed basis.”
RS21, which launched in 2014, specializes in packaging mounds of information into easily understandable, web-based platforms to allow decision makers to rapidly analyze the root causes of issues. The company, which employs about 50 people at a 4,700-square-foot space Downtown and at a satellite office in Washington, D.C., built its interactive maps as a public service.
“It’s all on our own dime, because the coronavirus is affecting everyone,” Rath said. “I couldn’t stop my people from doing it if I wanted to. These are passionate data scientists. This is what they live for.”
To access the maps, go to covid.rs21.io.
Resource: “RS21 Rolls Out Coronavirus Maps Nationwide“
