Why communication is key to coronavirus response
Original Post on Cities Today.
The southern California city of Carlsbad has launched an online map to enable residents under lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic to easily find restaurants and cafes that either offer deliveries or kerbside take away services.
The map is not only helping residents but also local businesses to continue to operate during the statewide stay-at-home order in California.
“We immediately started engaging with our small- and medium-sized businesses to figure out what we could do to help them and what services they need,” David Graham, Chief Innovation Officer, Carlsbad, told Cities Today. “In a lot of ways, communication has been key for our companies.”
The city has since been issuing joint communications with the Chamber of Commerce and the Village Association to help summarise and connect companies with resources like small business loans, disaster recovery, and unemployment and disability payments for workers.
Graham said that since launching, the map has had a “flood of requests” from businesses to be included and has coincided with the creation of other GIS mapping on a range of issues to help residents and businesses.
This includes working with 911 dispatch information to have local data on people who have symptoms, to help the city recognise and respond to clusters.
“We’re getting good information from the County of San Diego but there’s even more localised data sets that we can use to help our first responders and our disaster preparedness and management, to understand what is happening in this situation,” said Graham.
The city is no stranger to disaster response, having experienced wildfires and a Hepatitis A outbreak in the last decade. Although far different from the coronavirus pandemic, Graham said that this has helped put in place a robust Emergency Operations Centre–where Graham now splits his time working between City Hall and home.
With an “excellent” emergency preparedness director, the city has been tracking and preparing for the virus since January.