There's a Map for That

During the year-long debate in 2022 about the need to extend the Florida Turnpike, perhaps the only thing passionate advocates for and against the project had in common was that they all relied on data from the Florida Geographic Data Library at the University of Florida to make their cases.

The massive FGDL database?—?more than 600 layers of mapping information about such things as traffic, flood plains, endangered species and cultural artifacts?—?is at the heart of the state’s protocol for reviewing transportation projects. Created in 1998, information from the data library has been downloaded more than 600,000 times since it went fully online in 2012.

Over the years, FGDL has served as the trusted broker for information that has helped to streamline countless infrastructure projects and “get everyone on the same page,” says Lex Thomas, director of the GeoPlan Center in UF’s College of Design, Construction and Planning, where FGDL is housed.

“Mutually accepted FGDL data has helped to save significant time, and therefore money, on thousands of infrastructure projects,” Thomas says. “Environmental groups also have gotten significant wins thanks to that data, like route changes or wildlife crossings that helped to preserve natural habitat or endangered species.”

In the case of the Turnpike, after dozens of meetings and thousands of public comments, DOT leaders decided not to recommend any of the four proposed extension routes and to instead focus on increasing capacity on Interstate 75.

“UF’s GeoPlan Center has provided a platform for interagency collaboration, researched innovative solutions with new technologies, and identified additional data sources to support our environmental review process,” says Ruth Roaza, who has spent over 20 years as an analyst with Florida DOT. “The expertise and quality of work provided by the GeoPlan Center have contributed significantly to the success of the program.”

But GeoPlan isn’t just for infrastructure projects. When Dr. Jennifer Fishe, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at UF Health Jacksonville , needed to evaluate the impact of long ambulance rides on treatments for asthma emergencies in children, the GeoPlan team helped her map the data in a way that made the issue visible.

“Asthma is the most common chronic childhood disease and a leading cause of emergency visits, but there is little evidence and few guidelines on the best way for EMS to take care of pediatric asthma attacks in the ambulance,” Fishe says. “Every medication administered and procedure performed in the ambulance must be balanced against the need to quickly transport to an emergency department.”

Fishe says the maps GeoPlan developed using data about the location of ambulance calls and hospitals and response times “is very powerful, because it clearly illustrates that there are still rural areas that are underserved in terms of pediatric health services. Without Geoplan I wouldn’t be able to do my research, plain and simple.”

by Joseph Kays