Hundreds of Volunteers Create Nationwide COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Site Layers

295 Volunteers

October 2021 Update

GISCorps closed out the COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Sites mapping mission on October 15, 2021. 

The COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Sites Data Creation project was originally expected to last a few weeks, but ended up extending to more than 18 months. Around 300 volunteers contributed time and effort, mapping over 70,000 sites and processing almost 3,000 valid public form submissions. Thousands of sites were contributed in bulk by testing providers and government agencies, and the data was viewed more than 17 million times. We are very proud of what we achieved through this collaborative effort, and we are grateful to every volunteer and partner who participated.

Special thanks to our top 50 volunteer contributors: Jessica Beres, Josh Green, Thao Nguyen, Nicholas Sze, Nancy Church, Kelly Meehan, Crystal Fraley, Carlos Saavedra, Neda Kasraee, Chris Watson, Eli Cox, Jesse Roller, Jack Howell, Tim Small, Katie Caulfield, Esme Wong, Andrew Laws, Christina Brunsvold, Charlotte Smetanka, Tammy Eifler, Alicia Coleman, Kurt Binversie, Jeremy Hruska, Michael Mulqueen, Marie Norwood, Emily Covalt, Paul Russell, Duduzile Mashinini, Jeremy Herbert, Anthony Hoffman, Spencer Chew, Maria Alicia Hack, Joe Bevan, Chen Wang, Elizabeth Ramirez, Megan White, Graziella Lorion, Danielle Schaffeld, Diana Gerberich, Charles Feng, Tristan Damron, Angela Rienzo, Kevin Mills, Amanda Drinkard, Vi Tran, Ray Brice, Nico Kroes, Lucas Hutchinson, Wendy Couvillion French, and Jillian Walechka. The mission was led by Holly Torpey with support from Core Committee members Erin Arkison and Troy Wirth.

Screenshot of the GISCorps COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Sites Data Creation Hub page.

February 2021 Update

In January 2021, the COVID-19 Testing Sites data creation team began mapping COVID-19 vaccination sites in addition to testing sites. Like the testing sites data, the vaccination site location data is available as a public feature service view and can be accessed on the COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Sites Data Creation Project Hub Site. A COVID-19 Vaccination Sites in the United States dashboard (similar to the COVID-19 Testing in the United States dashboard) was also developed to publicly display aggregated statistics about the data and the progress of the project.

To help support that effort, project leaders sent out a second recruitment announcement to new volunteers who had joined GISCorps after the initial launch of the COVID-19 Testing Sites data creation mission. Eighty-four volunteers responded to that call, joining the team of remaining volunteers in their dedicated Slack channel. The volunteers continue mapping data in an ArcGIS Online-based Volunteer Portal application, which has evolved continuously through the course of the project.

As of the end of February 2021, GISCorps volunteers had mapped over 43,000 testing and vaccination sites, and the COVID-19 Testing Sites feature service view had been viewed over 14 million times. The dataset is featured in state, county, and local testing site finder maps and dashboards and has been cited in numerous articles and studies. A list of related articles and applications appears at the bottom of this post.

Credit for this achievement goes not only to the mission volunteers (especially standout volunteer Jessica Beres, who has singlehandedly mapped over 7,000 sites), but also to the many government entities, testing and vaccination providers, nonprofit organizations, and private citizens who have contributed to the effort by submitting data via Survey123 form, spreadsheets, and spatial data layers. The GISCorps COVID-19 Testing Site data creation team is grateful for the amazing support and collaboration they have received from all over the country. Please see the Thank You section of the project Hub site for a list of contributors.

Original Announcement

On March 19, Esri’s Disaster Response Program requested GISCorps assistance in helping to fill critical information gaps they were hearing from the user community in the response to the COVID-19 disease pandemic. The first task was for creating a nationwide layer of COVID-19 testing site locations. This dataset is open and available to local governments, healthcare providers, journalists and the public as one component of the comprehensive Coronavirus Response Solution that Esri is offering free of charge for six months to public health agencies and other organizations that request it. GISCorps and Esri are also coordinating with the federal Crowdsourcing Team on current and future needs.

Over 500 U.S. volunteers with ArcGIS Online experience responded to the recruitment email sent out by the GISCorps Core Committee.

Find out how to access or contribute to the GISCorps COVID-19 Testing Site data

Working together in a dedicated Slack channel and a custom Volunteer Portal Dashboard equipped with an embedded editing application built with Web App Builder, these volunteers are hard at work scouring official sources for testing site locations and requirements. Each volunteer has “adopted” one or more counties and committed to updating data for those counties on a daily basis throughout the mission.

Volunteer Portal

GISCorps volunteers also collaborated with Coders Against COVID, who contributed physician-vetted data they had developed through their crowdsourcing site, findcovidtesting.com.

Volunteers are also sharing a public Survey123 form with contacts at health departments, local governments, and healthcare facilities so that those organizations can submit updated information as soon as it is made public. Volunteers review these submissions, verify their accuracy against official websites, and add them to the map on an ongoing basis. They have been instructed to include only those testing sites whose locations have been made public through official channels such as the websites of health departments, local governments, and testing providers.

In addition, GISCorps can provide a spreadsheet template to state and local government agencies or healthcare providers to facilitate bulk upload of testing site locations; please contact us at info@giscorps.org to find out more about that option.

To facilitate public access to COVID-19 testing site location data, GISCorps has configured a mobile-friendly public Testing Site Locator application, a COVID-19 Testing in the United States dashboard and a COVID-19 Data Explorer application. In addition, a public view layer of the Testing Sites dataset is available as an ArcGIS REST service or a JSON file for anyone who would like to use it. All these resources are available on the GISCorps COVID-19 Resources Hub site.

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Press and Data Use

Project complete.

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