Learning paths by role¶
Each path lists resources in the order a newcomer would use them. Nearly all are free. Esri courses are described further on ArcGIS tools and training.
Advocates · Clinic teams · Researchers · Data scientists · Open source tools
Advocates and people living with ALS¶
The goal is to use existing maps with confidence and to bring one to a conversation with a legislator or a clinic.
- Watch the ALS Geospatial Hub Webinar for an overview of the maps for care and for advocacy.
- Use the Glen Rouse ALS Legislative Viewer to look up your legislators, then watch the Legislative Viewer 2.0 walk-through.
- Review your clinic with the ALS Clinic Advisor survey, which is designed to work with eye-gaze devices.
- Read Reading a map critically.
- Explore the ALS StoryMaps examples, then use Esri's StoryMaps overview and training resources to plan and build a story of your own.
Clinic teams and care organizations¶
The goal is to understand a clinic's catchment and how it compares with need.
- Explore the ALS Clinic Advisor Locator and Dashboard.
- Read the Esri article Using GIS to Elevate Clinic Quality and Improve Care for ALS / MND Patients.
- Take Esri's free GIS Basics and ArcGIS Online Basics web courses.
- Review the privacy page before mapping any patient addresses.
Researchers new to mapping¶
The goal is to design a study with a geographic component and to know what to ask a GIS partner for.
- Read GIS in plain language and the glossary.
- Watch Mapping the CDC National ALS Registry as a worked example of registry data placed on a map.
- Work through Esri's free health tutorials, introduced in the Esri Community post An ArcGIS tutorial series for developing essential GIS skills for health workflows.
- Read The standards stack to plan how location will be stored.
- Use the Grant toolkit when the study moves to a proposal.
Data scientists and informaticians¶
The goal is reproducible spatial analysis and standards-based storage.
- Geocomputation with R or Geocomputation with Python.
- Spatial Data Science: With Applications in R.
- The OHDSI GIS working group documentation, including its schema extensions and getting started page.
- The ArcGIS API for Python and the R-ArcGIS Bridge for working with hosted ArcGIS layers from code.
- Geospatial data standards on this site.
Training for your team¶
GeOALS experts can tailor a workshop, short course or mentoring session to your group's goals. Topics include StoryMaps, GIS fundamentals, web maps and dashboards, environmental linkage, data standards and location privacy. See Training with GeOALS for the training menu and an example project.
Open source tools¶
GeoALS builds on ArcGIS. Partners who work in open source tools can exchange data with us through open formats.
| Tool | Use | Link |
|---|---|---|
| QGIS | Desktop GIS | qgis.org |
| PostGIS | Spatial database on PostgreSQL | postgis.net |
| GDAL | Format conversion and raster processing | gdal.org |
| sf, terra, tidycensus | Spatial analysis and census data in R | r-spatial.org |
| GeoPandas | Spatial analysis in Python | geopandas.org |
| Leaflet and MapLibre | Web maps | leafletjs.com, maplibre.org |
| DeGAUSS | Geocoding and geographic variable assignment that runs locally, so addresses stay inside the institution | degauss.org |
| Census Geocoder | Free address geocoding for United States addresses | geocoding.geo.census.gov |