Data is a critical tool government agencies can and should use to share information and tell stories. From air quality to disaster response, mapping data is becoming an increasingly important tool to understand the changing climate.
One such effort is a place-based tool from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), known as the Environmental Justice Index (EJI), which went live in August of 2022. It measures cumulative impacts from environmental, social and health factors to better understand community impacts on health, according to Benjamin McKenzie, geospatial epidemiologist for the CDC.
“The EJI is a tool that’s designed to help public health officials, policymakers, community members, and others to map and examine the relative impact of environment and vulnerability on health, hoping to build towards that cleaner, healthier and more equitable future for everyone,” McKenzie stated.
The resource uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Mine Safety Health Administration and the CDC and offers new depth on tools that were developed at the state level, like CalEnviroScreen.
The tool allows users to look at the impact of certain factors on particular places — down to a specific address — and can break it down by specific factors like air pollution, proximity to hazardous sites, or social factors, such as race, poverty level or education. This granular view allows for comparison across the nation with high-level context.
This can help stakeholders evaluate the impact of events including climate disasters like wildfires or accidents like the recent train derailment in Ohio, and even to better respond to future pandemics.
“State and local governments can use the EJI to do things like focus in on areas with the greatest need,” McKenzie explained.
This tool provides relevant data in context of health impacts to better serve constituents, whether that means adjusting a project based on an environmental health equity issue or adjusting the language for communication materials to better serve a community.
The tool is updated on a biyearly basis. As climate change can make the impact of factors like air pollution worse, McKenzie expects the tool to be a valuable way to provide baseline data as to what communities are experiencing to help planners and other stakeholders put climate risks in context with the underlying vulnerability.
Another example of a tool that uses national data to support government agencies and other decision-makers is the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) ArcGIS Online Organization, a cloud-based system of data management established in 2015 to help fire officials better respond to incidents.
Responding to fire incidents typically involves coordination between multiple agencies, a mindset that guides NIFC’s work as a space for fire agencies to collaborate. State, local and tribal partners within the fire community all have access to this information.
“The whole idea or concept there is that, because fire ignores boundaries — fires can start on state land, go to private, and then go to federal — we operate that way with our programs,” said Sean Triplett, fire and aviation management tool and technology lead with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service.
Prior to the creation of this resource, Triplett said that communications were primarily completed through radios, sharing information through paper maps with data that was often inaccurate due to the speed with which fire events can change and expand.
Skip Edel, fire GIS program manager with the U.S. Department of the Interior, said that not only does the tool help to get data disseminated quickly to those responding, it also helps the data come back and more efficiently. Notably, the tool is available for any size fire, whether it be a tenth of an acre to 1 million acres.
“That turnaround time and that speed getting data in and out is the key,” Edel said. “Because it’s really hard to make decisions on fire when things are moving very quickly when you’ve got old data.”
The database is available online or on mobile devices to agencies of any size, with fire credentials being the only requirement to join. Edel noted the user base is primarily mobile-focused.
When a fire is threatening the safety of individuals, the data about evacuation zones and mapping is able to be sent out almost instantaneously. Previously, sharing that information took hours, explained Kate Hansen, a fire GIS specialist and NIFC ArcGIS Online administrator with the National Park Service.
“Agency administrators — those agencies or landowners or property owners that are impacted by the fire — they can now see what is happening with the fire through the data that’s provided through the ArcGIS online environment,” Triplett said. “So, they’re able to make more collaborative decisions, to look at different models and different scenarios and what can be done in terms of managing the fire to save those resources.”
