COVID-19 and the Transdisciplinary Future of Disease Governance

A premortem of the emerging post-pandemic period and a postmortem of the pre-pandemic phase are worthy pursuits for systems thinkers.

The highly infectious COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the important topic of disease governance as well as the research and policy issues accompanying it. Effective disease governance has strong spatio-temporal dimensions. A premortem of the emerging post-pandemic era and a postmortem of the pre-pandemic phase is not just a good idea, but the irreducible minimum which progressive world leaders must face up to. Three areas remain critical to achieving the desired transformation: education, research, and healthcare.

Promoting transdisciplinary research at the interface of geomatics and health sciences has become more crucial than ever. Geomatics combines traditional and modern aspects of surveying and mapping including airborne and spaceborne technologies, essentially using location-based data (spatial data) to deliver accurate and precise metrics for decision support. To live up to their raison d’être as the foremost disease detectives, modern medical epidemiologists should draw actionable intelligence from geomatics to combat infectious diseases and protect communities against exposure…