Defining Open Data

CDC Data Maps Illustrate Threat Impacts

It’s often impossible to confine environmental and public health events to a specific jurisdiction, agency or area of responsibility. That is particularly true of disasters with wide-ranging impacts.

Last summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched its Environmental Justice Index (EJI), a new mapping tool that uses 36 indicators to measure environmental, social and health impacts nationwide. It is the first national geographical tool that measures — and releases to the public — cumulative environmental impacts and related public health vulnerability.

EJI draws its data from the CDC, Census Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency, and Mine Safety and Health Administration. The index was developed in collaboration with the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and it ranks communities based on pollution levels, environmental hazards, poverty, quality of education, walkability and other factors.

“Addressing environmental injustice is critical to advancing health equity,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky in a press release announcing the index. “CDC is taking action to address the adverse health effects associated with environmental injustice by identifying those most at risk with tools like the Environmental Justice Index.”

In a similar vein, several multi-agency initiatives have produced open data maps. One is the National Interagency Fire Center ArcGIS Online Organization, which pools mapping and evacuation data to help guide wildfire responses among state, local, tribal and national agencies. Another example is the National Integrated Heat Health Information System’s Heat.gov, which includes a variety of temperature maps, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Urban Heat Island Map.

EJI and similar resources can help agencies with disaster response and guide them during normal operations when they’re designing future projects, evaluating risks or speaking with a community.

Texas, Feds Fight Opioid Crisis With Open Data

Last year 81,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses, and more than twice as many suffered a nonfatal overdose — and those were only the recorded cases. Open data resources that include community reporting of otherwise unreported events could be the key to reducing such tragic numbers.

According to Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the number of nonfatal overdoses today could be one of the most accurate indicators of fatal overdoses in the future. But until recently, most nonfatal events have gone undocumented — often because victims did not visit a medical facility that would record the incident.

Local research groups and community organizations have initiated programs to fill that information gap. TxCOPE, an open data app developed at the University of Texas in Austin, is one of them. It stands for Texans Connecting Overdose Prevention Efforts and allows community members to report overdoses anonymously, while aggregating traditional data sources. Because it will include a real-time map about where overdoses are occurring, the app helps direct emergency support to the appropriate areas, and it keeps agencies that collect overdose data equally informed, which is especially important in counties that provide scant access to toxicology reports.

“Data drives policy, data drives action,” said Kasey Claborn, TxCOPE’s Principal Investigator, in a Spectrum News profile of the project. She said the app empowers the local community to help address the opioid epidemic.

In December 2022, the White House launched a similar nationwide project, the Nonfatal Opioid Overdose Dashboard. Using information provided by emergency medical service (EMS) workers, the dashboard shows the number of nonfatal opioid overdoses in states and counties, the average number of naloxone doses administered, and the average time it takes EMS to reach a patient.

Gupta said this dashboard will give local communities and agencies new ability to build their overdose response plans and evaluate their progress with reducing overdoses.

4 Tips for Using Open Data

1. Evaluate your repository. Data is useful only if it’s accessible and well-maintained. Evaluate your repository using the guidelines developed by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
2. Educate agency staff, the public, stakeholders, elected officials and businesses about your data. Data-driven decisions are the goal in your agency and for other agencies, elected officials, individuals, communities, entrepreneurs and businesses. Don’t keep your valuable work a secret!
3. Provide storytelling or context. Sometimes the collected data isn’t enough to be meaningful to other agencies and the public. Make it count by providing context about why and how it was collected, and what questions it addresses.
4. Focus on trust. Communicate clearly with your agency partners and community about the findings that may benefit them and their work. Interview users routinely to confirm that the data is accessible and understandable.

This article appears in our guide, “Decision Intelligence: New Possibilities for Data-Based Decision-Making.” For more about how agencies are using data in practical ways, download it here:

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