Free Geocoding to Help Battle COVID-19.

Users working on topics related to COVID-19 tracking, control, and prevention may request access to free and unlimited geocoding resources.

The Texas A&M University (TAMU) GeoInnovation Service Center has been authorized by TAMU to provide assistance to the national and international public health communities by providing free and unlimited access to the TAMU Geocoding Platform for COVID-19 public health-related surveillance, treatment, and control in the United States.

If you are a public health official, academic researcher or student, or employee of a for-profit, non-profit, or government organization working on COVID-19 tracking, prevention, control, surveillance, or other efforts, you may request access to free and unlimited geocoding resources from Texas A&M University.

Follow These Steps for Access:

1. Sign up for an account at https://geoservices.tamu.edu.
2. Fill out our COVID-19 Geocoding Request Form.
3. We will review your request as soon as possible and add processing credits to your account once approved.
4. For questions, concerns, demo's, and how-to's, contact daniel.goldberg@tamu.edu.

Important Privacy Notes:

1. The TAMU Geocoding Platform is secured, audited, and capable of handling Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA/HITECH regulations.
2. TAMU can process Business Associate Agreements (BAA's) for those needing documentation of HIPAA/HITECH compliance.
3. TAMU can participate in (and/or be added to) Institutional Review Board (IRB) applications from other institutions.
4. Be advised that negotiating BAA's is an institutional attorney-to-attorney process, and as such has been known to take some time.
5. Be advised that negotiating multi-institutional IRB's is an institutional IRB-to-IRB process, and as such has been known to take some time.
6. If you and/or your organization needs a BAA or IRB approval, contact daniel.goldberg@tamu.edu.

Important Service Notes:

1. The TAMU Geocoding Platform is scalable and should be able to support any increases in load due to COVID-19 data processing. We have been and will keep tracking service load, and are standing ready to add computational resources as needed to keep pace with demand.
2. The TAMU team is rapidly working to setup a dedicated COVID-19 data processing platform instance.
3. Once in place and cleared by TAMU IT/Security, COVID-19 users will be contacted and directed to process their data using the new dedicated instance.
4. You will see interface changes over the next few days/weeks as we streamline our service delivery for the expected enhanced load.

Please share this information broadly with any and all colleagues from all fields, disciplines, industries, and domains who you believe could benefit from it.

Together, we can help leverage our research and applied expertise in the geospatial domains to make real impacts toward fighting this pandemic.