An Introduction to Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in the Classroom

This interactive session will focus on examples of using GIS in multiple K-12 classroom setting, including but not limited to teaching climate change, history, natural hazards, and literature. Geographic information systems, or GIS, is an online mapping tool, used globally in a variety of professions (e.g., emergency management, city planning, engineering, scientific labs) – that is accessible and beneficial to use in the K-12 classroom! GIS helps us visualize, question, analyze, and interpret real data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends. Participants will not only walk through a demonstration of GIS’ use and potential, they will partake in and practice using GIS with hands on activities. Come join us – and bring your device

Geocoding health data with Geographic Information Systems: a pilot study in northeast Italy for developing a standardized data-acquiring format

Introduction. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have become an innovative and somewhat crucial tool for analyzing relationships between public health data and environment. This study, though focusing on a Local Health Unit of northeastern Italy, could be taken as a benchmark for developing a standardized national data-acquiring format, providing a step-by-step instructions on the manipulation of address elements specific for Italian language and traditions. Methods. Geocoding analysis was carried out on a health database comprising 268,517 records of the Local Health Unit of Rovigo in the Veneto region, covering a period of 10 years, starting from 2001 up to 2010. The Map Service provided by the Environmental Research System Institute (ESRI, Redlands, CA), and ArcMap 10.0 by ESRI\uae were, respectively, the reference data and the GIS software, employed in the geocoding process. Results. The first attempt of geocoding produced a poor quality result, having about 40% of the addresses matched. A procedure of manual standardization was performed in order to enhance the quality of the results, consequently a set of guiding principle were expounded which should be pursued for geocoding health data. High-level geocoding detail will provide a more precise geographic representation of health related events. Conclusions. The main achievement of this study was to outline some of the difficulties encountered during the geocoding of health data and to put forward a set of guidelines, which could be useful to facilitate the process and enhance the quality of the results. Public health informatics represents an emerging specialty that highlights on the application of information science and technology to public health practice and research. Therefore, this study could draw the attention of the National Health Service to the underestimated problem of geocoding accuracy in health related data for environmental risk assessment

Putting Your Business on the Map: Geographic Information Systems for Small Business

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a specialized type of computer information system that allows users to display a wide range of data on a map. The increasing availability of demographic and other information in computerized form has lead to an expansion of the use of GIS into the business world. The increasing power of  relatively inexpensive personal computers, improvements in user interfaces for GIS, and falling prices for an increasingly diverse range of GIS data products have all contributed to a situation where small businesses can take advantage of capabilities that were previously the exclusive domain of the large corporation. This article provides an introduction to GIS capabilities for the small business end-user and provides information to aid the reader in deciding whether GIS may be applicable to their business decision making needs

Geographic Information Systems Analysis of Walkability Data for the Atlanta Beltline Communities

A MASTERS OF PUBLIC HEALTH CAPSTONE PROJECT: GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS ANALYSIS OF WALKABILITY DATA FOR THE ATLANTA BELTLINE COMMUNITIES By MICHALE HAIA KANCHIK July 21, 2017 INTRODUCTION: As a means of combating the growing obesity epidemic in the United States, public health experts are promoting the building of walkable communities. Using walkability data initially collected for the CDC’s Atlanta Beltline Project, this study will examine select features of the built environment and their relationship to active people. This capstone is seeking to explore factors present in the built environment that are related to physical activity AIM: Using the Atlanta Beltline Project’s segment-level walkability data, this capstone will aim to deliver a micro-scale analysis of pedestrian walkability features. The author believes that completing a spatial analysis of the data, will allow developing a tangible product that will further enhance and benefit the works of the CDC’s Atlanta Beltline Project. In addition, by utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS), this capstone hopes to deliver valuable information on the physical environments and walkability patterns that most currently portray Atlanta Beltline segments. METHODS: Methods used in this study include an extensive review of existing literature, descriptive analysis of environmental attributes, mapping, and spatial analysis using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology. RESULTS: Overall, Atlanta Beltline segments with a bus stop exhibited the highest presence of active people (26.3 percent). Beltline segments that had broken/boarded windows/vacant buildings/homes demonstrated the second highest presence of active people (21.21 percent). Streets with trees for shade had the lowest presence for active people (17.99 percent). Substantial differences in the presences of active people were found when making a comparison between the control (Westside) and experimental (Southside) Beltline communities. Study findings are all based on the descriptive nature of the analysis performed, and as a result, do not intend to demonstrate statistical significance. DISCUSSION: Study findings indicate that the presence of certain built environment features may promote walkability along the Atlanta Beltline communities. INDEX WORDS: walkability indicators, built environment, walkable communities, the Atlanta Beltline, audit instruments, Geographic Information Systems (GIS

Assessing preventable hospitalisation indicators (APHID): protocol for a data-linkage study using cohort study and administrative data

Introduction Potentially preventable hospitalisation (PPH) has been adopted widely by international health systems as an indicator of the accessibility and overall effectiveness of primary care. The Assessing Preventable Hospitalisation InDicators (APHID) study will validate PPH as a measure of health system performance in Australia and Scotland. APHID will be the first large-scale study internationally to explore longitudinal relationships between primary care and PPH using detailed person-level information about health risk factors, health status and health service use. Methods and analysis APHID will create a new longitudinal data resource by linking together data from a large-scale cohort study (the 45 and Up Study) and prospective administrative data relating to use of general practitioner (GP) services, dispensing of pharmaceuticals, emergency department presentations, hospital admissions and deaths. We will use these linked person-level data to explore relationships between frequency, volume, nature and costs of primary care services, hospital admissions for PPH diagnoses, and health outcomes, and factors that confound and mediate these relationships. Using multilevel modelling techniques, we will quantify the contributions of person-level, geographic-level and service-level factors to variation in PPH rates, including socioeconomic status, country of birth, geographic remoteness, physical and mental health status, availability of GP and other services, and hospital characteristics. Ethics and dissemination Participants have consented to use of their questionnaire data and to data linkage. Ethical approval has been obtained for the study. Dissemination mechanisms include engagement of policy stakeholders through a reference group and policy forum, and production of summary reports for policy audiences in parallel with the scientific papers from the study.</p

Identifying infestation probabilities of Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis, Fairmaire) in the Mid-Atlantic region

Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) impacts all species of North American ash trees, and has caused several million dollars (U.S.) in damage to trees across the affected region. EAB is primarily spread through the movement of trees and wood products, such as nursery stock and firewood. This thesis assessed the potential risk of EAB introduction in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., where the species has not yet been as widely reported. Using a Geographic Information Systems-based approach, a risk prioritization framework was developed to assess and rank various mapped factors for EAB introduction. Results indicated high risk areas throughout the study region with approximately 30 counties being cited for potential risk. From an analysis of risk versus ash basal area for all counties, three management strategies were derived; quarantine, plan harvest, public outreach and monitoring

Citizens as Voluntary Sensors: Spatial Data Infrastructure in the World of Web 2.0

Much progress has been made in the past two decades, and increasingly since the popularizing of the Internet and the advent of the Web, in exploiting new technologies in support of the dissemination of geographic information. Data warehouses, spatial data libraries, and geoportals have proliferated, and today’s users of geographic information have a wealth of potential sources that can be searched for suitable data sets. Standards have been established, issues of syntactic interoperability have been largely addressed, and rich descriptions are available in metadata to allow the suitability of a given data set to be assessed. Table digitizers used to be an essential asset for any spatial data center in the days when most sources of geographic information were in the form of paper maps, and skill in digitizing was a major part of any introduction to geographic information systems (GIS). Today, however, users rely heavily on digital sources, and virtually all digitizing is heads-up on-screen

The predictive power of health system environments: a novel approach for explaining inequalities in access to maternal healthcare

Introduction The growing use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to link population-level data to health facility data is key for the inclusion of health system environments in analyses of health disparities. However, such approaches commonly focus on just a couple of aspects of the health system environment and only report on the average and independent effect of each dimension. Methods Using GIS to link Demographic and Health Survey data on births (2008-13/14) to Service Availability and Readiness Assessment data on health facilities (2010) in Zambia, this paper rigorously measures the multiple dimensions of an accessible health system environment. Using multilevel Bayesian methods (multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy), it investigates whether multidimensional health system environments defined with reference to both geographic and social location cut across individual-level and community-level heterogeneity to reliably predict facility delivery. Results Random intercepts representing different health system environments have an intraclass correlation coefficient of 25%, which demonstrates high levels of discriminatory accuracy. Health system environments with four or more access barriers are particularly likely to predict lower than average access to facility delivery. Including barriers related to geographic location in the non-random part of the model results in a proportional change in variance of 74% relative to only 27% for barriers related to social discrimination. Conclusions Health system environments defined as a combination of geographic and social location can effectively distinguish between population groups with high versus low probabilities of access. Barriers related to geographic location appear more important than social discrimination in the context of Zambian maternal healthcare access. Under a progressive universalism approach, resources should be disproportionately invested in the worst health system environments

Implementing corpus analysis and GIS to examine historical accounts of the English Lake District

This paper reports on interdisciplinary research into the automated geographical analysis of historical text corpora. It provides an introduction to this research, which is being completed by two interrelated projects: the European Research Council-funded Spatial Humanities project and the Leverhulme Trust-funded Geospatial Innovation in the Digital Humanities project. In addition to contextualising the work of these projects, the paper introduces a case study that applies collocation analysis, automated geo-parsing, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The focus of this study is a 1.5 million-word corpus of writing about the English Lake District. This corpus comprises 80 works written between the years 1622 and 1900. In investigating this corpus, we demonstrate how a hybrid geographical and corpus-based methodology can be used to study the application of specific aesthetic terminology in historical writing about the Lakeland region