The New Normal | | | Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic now stretching into its 19th month here in the United States, the Eastern Shore Regional GIS Cooperative has continued to operate with our trademark quality, creativity and responsiveness to our partners. When the team went to fully remote work, we quickly adopted new online collaboration tools like Basecamp in order to better communicate and keep our complex projects on track. That way of working has been maintained as we returned to our office on the Downtown Plaza in Salisbury, with team members alternating between remote and in-office workspaces. As the director of this amazing group, I have been so impressed and proud of their resilience and flexibility as they never lost sight of the importance of delivering for partners even when new challenges presented themselves. | | | In many ways, the impact of a pandemic was a net positive for the ESRGC. It not only allowed our GIS technicians, analysts, programmers and managers to establish a better work/life balance, but it gave us the opportunity to expand our capabilities on new projects. The need for data visualization became readily apparent in the early days of the crisis, so the ESRGC quickly stood up COVID-19 data dashboards for tracking positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Maryland. We partnered with TidalHealth to track and visualize the need for respiratory care at the height of the initial wave. We then embarked on a major economic recovery and resilience project that is still ongoing. The Eastern Shore Economic Recovery project (http://recovery.delmarvaindex.org) has created multiple dashboards, web maps, infographics and a website to give our county economic development offices the information they need to track both the ongoing shock of the pandemic on our local businesses but also to assist in the recovery that is already underway. With funding from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and working in partnership with the MidShore Regional Council, the Tri-County Council of the Lower Eastern Shore and each of the economic development directors, we have been proud to develop innovative tools that should serve our region now and into the future. | | | COVID-19 is on its way to becoming endemic, rather than a pandemic, so we are learning to live with this new normal. But the staff at the ESRGC are working hard every day to make that “normal” on the Eastern Shore be even better than what came before! | | | Michael Scott, Ph.D., GISP | Director, Eastern Shore Regional GIS Cooperative
Dean, Henson School of Science and Technology |
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