A South African water services specialist is developing a GIS tool to help the Departments of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Water and Sanitation (DWS), and Health (DoH) to work jointly with municipalities in their fight to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professional water services consultant Derek Hazelton explains that the simple, user-friendly COVID-19 GIS mapping and communications enabling tool will record the DoH locations of COVID-19 cases, and ‘hotspots’ designated for CoGTA by municipalities or other organisations. The records will be stored in a Google Earth map showing the boundaries of each of South Africa’s the 257 municipalities.

The aim is to help fight the pandemic in South Africa by enabling easier communication between national departments and all tiers of government as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and plan their interventions.

How it works

The Demarcation Board boundaries of South Africa’s nine provinces, eight metros, 44 district municipalities (DMs) and 205 local municipalities (LMs) have been plotted using Google Earth Pro. Thus, the records of the COVID-19 cases and the hotspots will be visibly located in each of the 257 municipalities.  

Hazelton chose Google Earth as the vehicle to launch the tool because it is freely available and easy-to-use. “Google Earth is therefore an ideal instrument for every municipality to use for communicating upwards with the other tiers of government, and for national departments to communicate with each other and with the lower tiers of government,” he explains.

The mapping and communications tool has the capability of receiving and updating data on the location of COVID-19 cases and other information, such as deaths. It can also receive and update data on hotspots from any source. The data can include the date, source, and a brief description of the hotspot, as well as any action planned or taken to overcome the hotspot’s risk attributes.

For ease of use by the various national departments, the tool divides municipalities into four main classes: water service authority (WSA) DMs, other DMs, WSA LMs and other LMs. The eight metros are also shown separately. “Thus, for example, the DoH could use the tool to focus its communications on metros and DMs, while the DWS focuses its communications on the most affected WSAs.” Table 1 shows how these classifications are represented for Gauteng.

The figures below illustrate a few random examples of what can be displayed using the COVID-19 GIS mapping and communications enabling tool.

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Collaboration with government

Hazelton hopes to collaborate with government departments to assist them with information plotting and mapping efforts. The DoH, for example, is currently developing locality maps for the three provinces most affected by the pandemic – Gauteng, Western Cape, and Kwa-Zulu Natal – through the National Institute for Communicable Diseases. 

“If we were to collaborate to create sets of integrated maps indicating both municipal boundaries and the location of COVID-19 cases, we could assist municipal and other stakeholders to focus their limited resources by adding the proximity of COVID-19 cases to their hotspot risk assessments,” explains Hazelton.

He also sees the tool as being useful in other areas after the pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, Hazelton was at an advanced stage of assembling a small team to respond to the National Water and Sanitation Master Plan’s Call to Action. “We planned to facilitate and coordinate the implementation of WSA turnaround programmes. The implementation of the proposed mapping and communications enabling tool, apart from supporting government’s COVID-19 response efforts, will also build a useful foundation for implementing WSA turnaround programmes once South Africa and the world returns to a new normal.”

For more information contact Derek Hazelton (Pr. Eng., FWISA, founder and manager of TSE Water Services) on tsewater@icon.co.za