Data Modernization: Impacts of Heat and Wildfire Smoke score cards

July 31, 2025

Data Modernization: Impacts of Heat and Wildfire Smoke score cards

Beacon, July 31, 2025

It may be telling of my age, but I remember when Microsoft Excel came out. (Heck, I remember when Pong came out.) Excel was an AMAZING tool, and I think it still is. I keep spreadsheets for everything – groceries, finances, travel plans, cost/benefits for moving to another country, house remodel projects, movie lists, and even an inventory of my vintage clothing collection. I LOVE excel.

A few years ago, on a trip to Tuscany, I found a new love – Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I took a week-long summer course on spacial epidemiology using GIS and I was smitten. Not only does GIS make maps, it has an associated survey app, can integrate with Power BI, can create story maps, and much more. So, when it came time to move on from our Excel score cards and upgrade our survey technology, I naturally turned to my new interest and it did not disappoint. This year we are updating our score cards to this more user-friendly, easy to platform. This step to modernize our data collection will allow users to:

Share surveys easily across their organization with just a link
Print or save survey results
Facilitate easier updates
Allow organizations to see a geospacial representation of their alignment with Bree guidelines across multiple sites
Allow FHCQ to easily pull data from multiple organizations into power BI for analysis

Future modernization steps will include adding links to and from our evaluation framework documents.

For those of you that have started or are planning to implement any part of the Bree guidelines on the Health Impacts of Heat and Wildfire Smoke, I would like to invite you to submit data on your current state using these new tools. It will not only help us track progress on our guidelines implementation, it will help you plan and operationalize your future evaluations and compare your progress to other similar organization. Submitting your current state data will also make your organization eligible for our AWARDS.