Ensuring access to food and services while limiting disease exposure to those most at risk
By: Eric Gundersen
Understanding where people are most vulnerable is critical to ensuring that people have access to food and services, while also limiting disease exposure to those at greatest risk. UrbanFootprint is a data visualization tool that maps socio-demographic data to identify lower-income areas that have poor access to grocery stores and insufficient access to transit.
To map and measure the potential impact of COVID-19, nationwide incidence data is updated and curated daily in the UrbanFootprint platform.
As communities are required to shelter in place, travel is becoming more limited and trips for food, medicine, and other essential services have become more difficult for vulnerable populations. UrbanFootprint analyzes walking and transit options in poor access areas and, for example, can run a network analysis of walking access to grocery stores in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area and see that 75% of residents in this area are within a 15-minute walk of a grocery store, but there are also areas with poorer access, highlighted by the darker areas in this map.
This type of analysis can quickly enable an agency or stakeholder to focus on those areas needing specific assistance during this crisis — thanks to highly curated socio-demographic data that identifies vulnerable populations and can further enable prioritization of deployment of resources.
Contact UrbanFootprint to access some of the other relevant datasets available in UrbanFootprint, including:
- US hospital locations and beds
- Socio-demographic data from the US Census
- Poverty and vulnerability data from federal and state agencies
- Chronic disease and health promotion data & indicators
- Life expectancy estimates
- Food access data
- Schools, parks, transit, and other essential services point-of-interest data
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eric gundersen (@ericg) | Twitter
Maps feature data from Mapbox and OpenStreetMap and their data partners.
UrbanFootprint mapping mobility and emergency response was originally published in maps for developers on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.