Presented by Jen Curran, MEASURE Evaluation, at the June 2012 MEASURE GIS Working Group meeting.

1. FOSS White Paper:
A User-Friendly GIS for Public Health:
Key Functional and Usability Requirements
GIS Working Group
Measure Evaluation
June 2012

2. GIS WG April 2010
 To identify minimum feature set required by
public health decision-makers
 Working Group Meeting
 Literature review
 Identification of appropriate GIS FOSS
 Evaluation of commonly used FOSS

3. Objectives:
 Help GIS software developers understand the
functionality and usability required of PHP
 Provide average PHP with assessment of
functionality and usability of FOSS GIS software
for practical applications

4. Common GIS tasks for PHP
 Demonstrate need for services
 Determine service point locations/target
interventions
 Monitor program implementation
 Demonstrate impact

5. GIS software
 ArcGIS from Esri
 DevInfo from UNICEF
 EpiMap from CDC
 DHIS2
 Quantum GIS (QGIS) from OSGeo

6. Use Cases
 Evaluate health care access
 Target an HIV/AIDS prevention program
 Develop and evaluate OVC program roll-out
 Target areas for mitigation of malaria risk

7. Use Case Review

8. Functionality
 Map production (single and multiple variables)
 Spatial Analysis (beginner to intermediate)
 Geo-editing (create or modify vector datasets)
 Project-level data management (data
management and basic statistical analysis)

9. Usability
 Intuitively designed interfaces
 Requires single or multiple interfaces (database
management tools internal v external)
 Complex work-around
 Technical documentation clear and easy to
understand

10. Next steps
 Add more case studies
 Illustrate use case ‘steps’ with real data
 Out for review – soon!

11. MEASURE Evaluation is funded by the U.S. Agency for
International Development (USAID) and implemented by the
Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill in partnership with Futures Group International,
ICF International, John Snow, Inc., Management Sciences for
Health, and Tulane University. Views expressed in this
presentation do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the
U.S. government.
MEASURE Evaluation is the USAID Global Health Bureau's
primary vehicle for supporting improvements in monitoring and
evaluation in population, health and nutrition worldwide.