Pop that zinc tablet and hoard that toilet paper Re/Cappers, we’ll soon unpack a sweeping COVID retrospective from the fine folks at Esri. It’s a brilliant postgame analysis of GIS’s role during the pandemic - and most assuredly in future ones.
But there’s no mapping that story without first charting an 1800s breakthrough that permanently altered public health through, well, geographic information and systems: John Snow’s cholera map.
In the sweltering summer of 1854, London's Soho district became the epicenter of a deadly mystery. Cholera, the infamous "blue death," swept through the crowded streets, thickening blood, depriving oxygen, and claiming lives with haunting velocity. As panic gripped the city, one bloke stood apart from the chaos, armed with nothing but intellect and an unconventional approach to solving the puzzle.
Dr. John Snow (who Jon wishes he was), an anesthesiologist by trade, rejected the prevailing "miasma theory" that blamed air for the disease's spread. Instead, he turned to the power of spatial analysis and data visualization to unravel the truth.
Dr. John Snow’s lifelong symptoms were brilliance and diligence. Image credit Britannica
With meticulous precision from the surveying of one C.F. Cheffins, Snow began mapping the outbreak, creating what would become one of the most influential infographics in medical history.
Each cholera death birthed a dot on his hand-drawn map, a grim constellation that slowly revealed a pattern. As the dots clustered around a single point – the Broad Street water pump – Snow's suspicions crystallized. He had pinpointed the source of the outbreak, not through microscopes or test tubes, but through deft use of geospatial data.
Snow's map wasn't just a static image; it was a dynamic tool that allowed him to see relationships invisible to the naked eye. By overlaying death locations with water sources, he created a primitive yet powerful Geographic Information System (GIS), decades before the term would be coined.
With his map and copious evidence, Snow battled skeptical authorities. In a dramatic showdown, he convinced officials to remove the pump handle, effectively cutting off the contaminated water supply. The epidemic's decline thereafter was a testament to the power of spatial thinking.
Snow's work laid the foundation for modern epidemiology and showcased the potential of rigorous data collection, geospatial analysis, and visualization. His story is a clarion call to innovators; harness spatial data, and you just may mitigate or defeat grand challenges of our time.
One Snow changed the fate of Westeros. The other changed the fate of public health.
Guess which one truly mattered.
What’s Cappenin’ This Week
Humans detest lack of control (some even theorize it’s the psychological core of why airports drive us mad.) Now add to that a lethal virus, inflation, mass confusion, kids LFHing, and the horror that was Zoom stand-up comedy, and you have a civilization salivating for simple, real, productive knowledge.
GIS didn’t merely provide that; it also produced a semblance of stability and control, collective sanity, health, and even camaraderie, as illuminated in a recent Esri blog post that tested positive for breadth, depth, and excellence.
Leveraging ArcGIS online and WHO/CDC data, Johns Hopkins University tracked near real-time spread. Image credit Esri
From the earliest days of the outbreak, GIS helped visualize the virus’s spread while optimizing resource allocation. Dashboards like Johns Hopkins’ COVID-19 tracker became essential tools for governments, researchers, and the public, offering real-time insights into case numbers and policy impacts. Penn Medicine’s Predictive Healthcare team was practically a soothsayer for hospitalization projections, after launching CHIME (COVID-19 Hospital Impact Model for Epidemics).
These tools, and the pandemic that necessitated them, aren’t about to be forgotten either, given the ongoings of measles, Mpox, bird flu, and hoo knows what else down the pipeline.
It’s why Esri unpacks so much GIS utility: mapping transmission patterns, wastewater, epidemiologic curves, supply chains, testing sites, economic rebounds, and more, in the exceptional blog below.
Mining might entail inside jobs, but outside and up high? Much to see. Image credit Airobotics via UKU Tech Limited
2021 Uncle Sam initiatives on supply chains and minerals served as liftoff, while companies like Exyn Technologies, Emesent, Flyability, AutoMap and Carlson have landed us where we are - a SLAM dunk of safety, efficiency, and data enrichment.
Because SLAM-equipped drones (simultaneous localization and mapping) can craft 3D maps of mines, while localizing the vehicle in said map, beyond visual line-of-sight, even in GPS-denied caverns - all while human hazard exposure is next to zilch. It’s one of many perks illuminated by retired USAF colonel Dawn Zoldi in a publication for Inside Unmanned Systems.
Drill down on the link below for legislative efforts, drone distinction, evolution of hazards and inspections, standards, 10,000x cost savings, an African collapse case study, and beyond.
It’s called The Line ‘cause it’s linear, a 110-mile network of smart cities. It will be free of roads, cars, and carbon emissions. It will be housed in a single building, in Saudi Arabia. It will be $500 billion. Probably more.
And as evidenced in the video below, it’s anything but a one-off for a region obsessed with building bigger, better, and more creatively. But that presents a litany of challenges: labor shortages, budget bleeding, nailbiting timelines, safety assurance, and extreme weather unique to the Middle East.
Well, human challenges anyway.
If the Middle East’s lofty visions are obstacle-riddled, the closest thing to a panacea might be the robot, were you to ask Telmo Perez, Innovation Director at global conglomerate Acciona.
Perez, transparently citing his organization’s extensive robot use for a €149-million hospital project, presents a flurry of similar robotic applications that could satisfy Middle Eastern aspirations to be the region of the future. Take in the informative, and yes, self-promotional (but again, transparent) opinion piece hosted on Construction Business News, touching on robotic bricklaying, site inspections on brutal terrain, GPS & LiDAR-equipped robotic excavators, 3D printing, tying rebar, sustainability, and other lessons construction firms could fancy, whether from Dubai or Denver.
Two seconds.
That’s all that elapses on this planet between Human A having a stroke, and Human B.
For many survivors, regaining mobility is daunting. Muscle weakness, coordination loss, and impaired balance have long spelled a multi-year rehabilitation process.
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), however, are putting recovery on the autobahn, with a quartet of tech and digital twins at the core.
One of the 24 patients who have successfully tested the exoskeleton-> digital twin loop. Image credit Sabrina Bauer/Technical University of Munich via Medical Xpress
Their new system helps patients learn to move paralyzed arms and hands quickly after a stroke, often at home and without needing others.
It’s the culmination of a supportive exoskeleton, functional electrical stimulation (FES), and a colored-flying-ball computer game feeding into a digital twin. In short, the algorithmic precision enables therapists and patients to know the exact, ideal intensity of movement. Not too much, not too little, just right - a fitting motto for a digital twin if ya think about it!
Medical Xpress reviews the 24-patient success story below, including stimulation to simulation, paralysis and grip, the digital twin control loop, impairment prediction, and "intention-controlled intelligent control".
The University of Washington Huskies Stadium sacked itself. Image credit University of Washington Libraries
Seattle, 1987. Grunge music is a local newborn, coffee shops are multiplying like rabbits that survived a nuclear apocalypse, and the University of Washington is dreaming big. It’s expanding Husky Stadium, adding 13,700 seats to become an exemplar of the college football experience. What could possibly go wrong?
February 25th, 10:07 AM. In a real metalmorphosis, 250 tons of steel went from a promising stadium addition into the world's largest, most expensive game of Pick-Up Sticks. In 12 seconds, the north bleachers collapsed into a twisted metal sculpture that no art major could explain.
The culprit? A premature farewell party for six out of nine guylines - those unsung heroes of construction and tension that keep structures from doing the cha-cha in the wind. It was like removing a tightrope walker's safety net mid-performance, except this acrobat weighed a quarter of a million pounds.
But wait! This tale has more twists than Tom Brady down 28-3. Just moments before the collapse, an eagle-eyed ironworker spotted a buckle in a 28-inch diameter tube. Faster than you can say "structural integrity," supervisor Wally Sharp evacuated the site, potentially saving the lives of 40 workers.
Then, in a stroke of millisecond serendipity, photographer John Stamets happened to be cycling by. With apparent cat-like reflexes, he captured the entire collapse in 21 heart-stopping frames. It was like the world's most expensive flip book, each image worth more than a thousand words - and probably a few thousand bucks in repair costs.
Technology isn’t just efficiency. It’s knowledge, the kind that could have prevented the premature guyline removal, and everything else that went awry in ‘87.
Reality capture would’ve swiftly captured precise measurements and forged picturesque models, detecting the early signs of structural strain long before the first catastrophic buckle. Drones’ aerial agility, that spotting of weaknesses from angles no human could access? Invaluable.
But today’s advancements go beyond simple detection. Robotics could have been deployed to conduct automated inspections, making detailed analyses of joints and beams without risking human lives - kinda like last week’s robotic Re/Cap. Digital twins, virtual replicas of the stadium, would have simulated every possible failure scenario, from minor stress cracks to complete structural failure, predicting the collapse down to the last detail. Knowing it wasn’t ideal to remove those guylines? That’s quality BIMformation.
These technologies would have been interconnected in an integrated platform, providing a holistic view of Husky Stadium’s health as if it had its own digital pulse.
Instead, reality unfolded differently. Husky Stadium collapsed, for reasons still viable today - you know, like, human error. So remember folks, the best way to not fumble is to have the best playbook. In AEC, that’s one filled with technology.
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