Spatial Data: make the most of your opportunities | Chris Grundy | TEDxLSHTM

What if we could use existing technologies to improve our ability to respond to emergencies and outbreaks? Geographical Information Specialist, Chris Grundy explains how you can use simple mobile technologies to collect a constant supply of data that will allow us to map disease outbreaks or populations, improve response times and prevent the spread of disease.
Chris Grundy is a Lecturer in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) as London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His background is Civil engineering and then a MSc in GIS. He started at LSHTM in 1993, supplying GIS support to projects on environmental links to health in the UK. Within a few years he was working across the whole institution, running training courses, and building research capacity. He has worked in most areas of health research in both low and high income countries. His main area of interest is data; how it can be collected and managed more efficiently, and how the requirements for clean data in GIS can be used to improved other aspects of data collection.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@tomkoch479]

Chris Grundy is one of the largely unsung experts in the field of computer-related data collection in health. What he describes is practical, simply and useful in the event of an evolving disease outbreak. There are, here, two take-aways. First, collecting data reflexively, and then collecting that data in a central place, provides a resource that is critical. Second, that in the event of an outbreak one need not be online to collect data. "Collect now, upload later," is the message. A future talk or paper hopefully will detail the new applications that can better be applied when in the midst of an outbreak or epidemic in far flung places.

[@lancee1043]

@ Chris Grundy (or if anyone reading knows of an answer)...
You talked about easy tools for people to collect data so that we might be able to analyse it later once we realise where the value is in it. Logically that would then require some form of storage for all that data, which invokes big data and some level of financial restrictions on the volume of data. My question is... are you aware of any large data resources (preferably publicly available) where there are large pools of this diverse data mix you speak of. I know there are geocaching hobbyists, do they also capture pictures and/or text/number variables? And where do they store all this data? Is this kind of data being shared in some public forum? What I am hoping for is some database format resource which I can begin connecting simple software tools to and analyse for myself? I have a degree in GIS and have worked as an analyst. Your talk made me wonder how we can begin to wade (in a practical way) through this amassing data. I'm a practical person and want to be able to do it for myself.

[@snapsmicrosystems7532]

Spatial is special

[@uforoetim7286]

What apps is best suitable for this data collection sir?

[@rajcom87]

nice

[@optimusprime2105]

yep he saw covid coming lol