Ecosystem Mapping

The Ecosystem Mapping working group is working on a toolkit to help communities map their community’s human animal support system. The toolkit will outline what organizations need to look for in community resources and the steps it takes to produce a map for your community members. Additionally, the toolkit will allow organizations to find gaps in their community.

The Ecosystem Mapping Group has been working on a a gap analysis tool using the Ideal Animal Welfare Ecosystem. This tool/worksheet will help shelters identify what is missing from their communities and partnership opportunities.

The ecosystem work group has been working with GIS mapping team members to pull contact information available online on animal-support businesses and organizations and lay it over the social vulnerability index map for the same community. This information can give us a high level view of need and resources available. Additionally, the team is now taking that information and drawing out a detailed outline for a mapping tool that is scalable for all communities. While this is happening, the Keeping Families Together team is working on gathering more detailed animal support resources from tier 1 communities to use on the map as well.

The Ecosystem Working Group has been trialing data collection for the Austin community with the goal to run preliminary resource maps. The group has also been working through existing census maps and data to determine what we would like to use in a comprehensive community data analysis to show gaps.

The Ecosystem Mapping WG has been working on the solidifying the group’s overall organizational structure and strategy. The group has also set up workflow and strategy for collecting information on animal welfare organizations throughout a community, which is being testing for Austin currently. In addition, the group is also working through the technical side of the database/repository.

The Ecosystem Mapping Working Group is developing two tools. One tool will be for communities’ animal welfare organizations to see where gaps in important programming may exist so that shelters and non-profits could potentially pivot their programs to fill in those gaps. Or, this tool could be used to find where overlap and redundancies may occur so that organizations can streamline programs with partner groups. Additionally, this working group is using this information to create a public facing tool for the general public to use to locate resources available in their community.