General practitioner (family physician) workforce in Australia: comparing geographic data from surveys, a mailing list and medicare

BACKGROUND Good quality spatial data on Family Physicians or General Practitioners (GPs) are key to accurately measuring geographic access to primary health care. The validity of computed associations between health outcomes and measures of GP access such as GP density is contingent on geographical data quality. This is especially true in rural and remote areas, where GPs are often small in number and geographically dispersed. However, there has been limited effort in assessing the quality of nationally comprehensive, geographically explicit, GP datasets in Australia or elsewhere.Our objective is to assess the extent of association or agreement between different spatially explicit nationwide GP workforce datasets in Australia. This is important since disagreement would imply differential relationships with primary healthcare relevant outcomes with different datasets. We also seek to enumerate these associations across categories of rurality or remoteness. METHOD We compute correlations of GP headcounts and workload contributions between four different datasets at two different geographical scales, across varying levels of rurality and remoteness. RESULTS The datasets are in general agreement with each other at two different scales. Small numbers of absolute headcounts, with relatively larger fractions of locum GPs in rural areas cause unstable statistical estimates and divergences between datasets. CONCLUSION In the Australian context, many of the available geographic GP workforce datasets may be used for evaluating valid associations with health outcomes. However, caution must be exercised in interpreting associations between GP headcounts or workloads and outcomes in rural and remote areas. The methods used in these analyses may be replicated in other locales with multiple GP or physician datasets

Linking archival data to location A case study at the UK National Archives

Purpose The National Archives (TNA) is the UK Government's official archive. It stores and maintains records spanning over a 1,000 years in both physical and digital form. Much of the information held by TNA includes references to place and frequently user queries to TNA's online catalogue involve searches for location. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how TNA have extracted the geographic references in their historic data to improve access to the archives. Design/methodology/approach To be able to quickly enhance the existing archival data with geographic information, existing technologies from Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Geographical Information Retrieval (GIR) have been utilised and adapted to historical archives. Findings Enhancing the archival records with geographic information has enabled TNA to quickly develop a number of case studies highlighting how geographic information can improve access to large‐scale archival collections. The use of existing methods from the GIR domain and technologies, such as OpenLayers, enabled one to quickly implement this process in a way that is easily transferable to other institutions. Practical implications The methods and technologies described in this paper can be adapted, by other archives, to similarly enhance access to their historic data. Also the data‐sharing methods described can be used to enable the integration of knowledge held at different archival institutions. Originality/value Place is one of the core dimensions for TNA's archival data. Many of the records which are held make reference to place data (wills, legislation, court cases), and approximately one fifth of users' searches involve place names. However, there are still a number of open questions regarding the adaptation of existing GIR methods to the history domain. This paper presents an overview over available GIR methods and the challenges in applying them to historical data

An investigation of the spatial patterning of gambling-related harm and the total consumption theory of gambling

Gambling is an important public health issue in Australia. According to recent estimates, gambling-related harm is the third largest contributor to the burden of disability in the state of Victoria, measured in terms of disability-adjusted life years. The gambling product most associated with gambling-related harm in Australia is the electronic gaming machine (EGM), which accounts for over half of all Australian gambling expenditure. Around 30 per cent of weekly EGM gamblers experience moderate or severe adverse impacts from their gambling. This thesis consists of six studies on the spatial distribution of the impacts of electronic gaming machines (EGMs) and the relationship between EGM losses and problem gambling. All have been published or were accepted for publication in peer-reviewed academic journals at the time of submission. Jointly, these studies developed theoretical and methodological tools to advance the production of small area estimates of gambling-related harm, as well as beginning the exploration of its consequences. The six studies in this thesis can be grouped into three inter-linked themes that contribute to this aim in different ways. Two studies are concerned with developing the applied and methodological tools for investigating the spatial distribution of problem gambling. The first of these studies presents a calibrated Huff model of the spatial behaviour of gamblers. The second of these uses the Huff model to refine spatial microsimulation derived small area estimates of the prevalence of problem gambling. Together, they provide a toolkit for estimating the local impacts of EGMs. Three studies provide the theoretical underpinning of the thesis by investigating the relationship between gambling losses and problem gambling at the scales of the individual, the EGM venue and state or territory. In order to develop the methods for investigating the spatial distribution of problem gambling, a sustained engagement was required with Total Consumption Theory in the context of gambling. These studies find a consistent relationship between EGM losses and the risk of harm at all spatial scales. At the scale of the individual, there is no evidence to support a J-shaped dose-response relationship, meaning that risk of gambling problems increases monotonically with money lost. A final study estimates the spatio-temporal correlation between EGM accessibility and a single gambling-related harm, domestic violence. Whereas research in the earlier phases of this project sought to estimate the distribution of ‘problem gambling’ as an outcome measure, phase four seeks to measure the relationship between EGM accessibility and specific gambling-related harms directly. In this instance, the spatial association between EGMs and police-recorded domestic violence incidents is investigated in Victorian postcodes over a ten-year period. A significant spatio-temporal association between these two variables is found, providing evidence of a link between EGM gambling and violence. This study concludes that future research might usefully explore the spatio-temporal co-occurrence of EGM gambling and specific gambling-related harms to better understand the social and health impacts of EGM gambling. The research developed in this thesis has contributed toward bringing knowledge of the geography of the impacts of EGMs closer to that of cognate public health issues. While Total Consumption Theory was developed in the context of gambling to underpin the production of local area estimates that incorporate gambling consumption as a risk factor, the findings in this section have broader implications for gambling regulation. More broadly, the approaches developed in this thesis and the research findings have the potential to contribute to improving the regulation of EGMs and thereby reduce the incidence of gambling-related harms

Developing Practical Tools to Inform the Allocation of Limited HIV Resources in North Carolina

In the current economy, North Carolina (NC) faces a multi-faceted HIV epidemic with limited funding and staff. As state revenue continues to decline, it is imperative that cuts to HIV program resources are based on evidence of where resources are most essential. The purpose of this dissertation was to 1) characterize the geographic distribution of HIV in order to better inform HIV resource allocation, and 2) provide practical tools to aid NC disease intervention specialists (DIS) in prioritizing their HIV partner notification caseloads. Using HIV surveillance data from 2000-2007, we identified highly localized geographic clusters, or core areas, of reported HIV cases in urban areas. These clusters were temporal in addition to spatial in nature and did not persist in the last two years of the study. The disappearance of these clusters was coincident with a dramatic increase in Internet use and distance to sexual partners among men who have sex with men (MSM). Internet-based interventionDoctor of Philosoph

Placespeak Business Plan

PlaceSpeak is a new product in the consultation software industry, which is an emerging sector with many competitors. This project reviews potential markets for the product and the product’s competitive advantages. While confirming that PlaceSpeak addresses a gap in the current consultation market, the research identifies some of the risks in the market and suggests several mitigation strategies. The project also highlights gaps in the current product design and implementation, and suggests possible strategies to fill these gaps prior to commercialization

Automatic reconstruction of itineraries from descriptive texts

Esta tesis se inscribe dentro del marco del proyecto PERDIDO donde los objetivos son la extracción y reconstrucción de itinerarios a partir de documentos textuales. Este trabajo se ha realizado en colaboración entre el laboratorio LIUPPA de l' Université de Pau et des Pays de l' Adour (France), el grupo de Sistemas de Información Avanzados (IAAA) de la Universidad de Zaragoza y el laboratorio COGIT de l' IGN (France). El objetivo de esta tesis es concebir un sistema automático que permita extraer, a partir de guías de viaje o descripciones de itinerarios, los desplazamientos, además de representarlos sobre un mapa. Se propone una aproximación para la representación automática de itinerarios descritos en lenguaje natural. Nuestra propuesta se divide en dos tareas principales. La primera pretende identificar y extraer de los textos describiendo itinerarios información como entidades espaciales y expresiones de desplazamiento o percepción. El objetivo de la segunda tarea es la reconstrucción del itinerario. Nuestra propuesta combina información local extraída gracias al procesamiento del lenguaje natural con datos extraídos de fuentes geográficas externas (por ejemplo, gazetteers). La etapa de anotación de informaciones espaciales se realiza mediante una aproximación que combina el etiquetado morfo-sintáctico y los patrones léxico-sintácticos (cascada de transductores) con el fin de anotar entidades nombradas espaciales y expresiones de desplazamiento y percepción. Una primera contribución a la primera tarea es la desambiguación de topónimos, que es un problema todavía mal resuelto dentro del reconocimiento de entidades nombradas (Named Entity Recognition - NER) y esencial en la recuperación de información geográfica. Se plantea un algoritmo no supervisado de georreferenciación basado en una técnica de clustering capaz de proponer una solución para desambiguar los topónimos los topónimos encontrados en recursos geográficos externos, y al mismo tiempo, la localización de topónimos no referenciados. Se propone un modelo de grafo genérico para la reconstrucción automática de itinerarios, donde cada nodo representa un lugar y cada arista representa un camino enlazando dos lugares. La originalidad de nuestro modelo es que además de tener en cuenta los elementos habituales (caminos y puntos del recorrido), permite representar otros elementos involucrados en la descripción de un itinerario, como por ejemplo los puntos de referencia visual. Se calcula de un árbol de recubrimiento mínimo a partir de un grafo ponderado para obtener automáticamente un itinerario bajo la forma de un grafo. Cada arista del grafo inicial se pondera mediante un método de análisis multicriterio que combina criterios cualitativos y cuantitativos. El valor de estos criterios se determina a partir de informaciones extraídas del texto e informaciones provenientes de recursos geográficos externos. Por ejemplo, se combinan las informaciones generadas por el procesamiento del lenguaje natural como las relaciones espaciales describiendo una orientación (ej: dirigirse hacia el sur) con las coordenadas geográficas de lugares encontrados dentro de los recursos para determinar el valor del criterio ``relación espacial''. Además, a partir de la definición del concepto de itinerario y de las informaciones utilizadas en la lengua para describir un itinerario, se ha modelado un lenguaje de anotación de información espacial adaptado a la descripción de desplazamientos, apoyándonos en las recomendaciones del consorcio TEI (Text Encoding and Interchange). Finalmente, se ha implementado y evaluado las diferentes etapas de nuestra aproximación sobre un corpus multilingüe de descripciones de senderos y excursiones (francés, español, italiano)

GOVERNMENT ACQUISITION OF HOMES TO REDUCE FLOOD DAMAGE, HOUSEHOLD WILLINGNESS TO PARTICIPATE, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR ACQUISITION POLICY

Studies show that a relatively small proportion of properties are responsible for a large proportion of the National Flood Insurance Program's claims. While several household-level flood risk mitigation measures exist to address the pervasive losses, government acquisition of at-risk homes is the most effective household-level flood mitigation approach to eliminate the flood risk to properties, but also the most expensive. The program, despite its potential, is arguably the most controversial and thus under-utilized by homeowners. To encourage participation, flood risk mitigation officials and policy makers want to know the factors that affect homeowners' willingness to participate in the program. So, to better inform policy makers, in this dissertation I examine empirically the factors that affect homeowner participation, including acquisition contract attributes, future insurance pricing, and availability of alternative mitigation efforts. Thus, this dissertation contributes to the growing literature on natural hazard risk mitigation and decision-making by providing evidence on the factors that influence homeowner participation in the government acquisition program. Also, this work provides valuable information on the potential effect of proposed programmatic changes on participation. In addition to attributes of the offered program, this dissertation explores how observables, like homeowner demographics and flood risk to the home, and latent characteristics, like homeowners' perceptions of flood risk, also impact willingness to participate. The dissertation consists of an introductory chapter and three self-contained papers organized into three chapters. In the first paper, which is presented in chapter 2, I combine homeowners' stated preference, socioeconomic, and flood risk data to examine acquisition price effects on participation and provide willingness to accept estimates. This paper has been published in the Southern Economic Journal. The second paper builds on the first paper in several ways. I use data from a national survey that elicits homeowners' stated preference for household-level flood risk mitigation, to examine how proposed changes to the buyout program, coupled with availability of alternative mitigation options like home elevation and future insurance pricing, will affect buyout participation. I estimate a conditional logit model and a random parameter logit model and provide willingness to accept estimates. In the final paper, which is presented in chapter 4, I evaluate the policy implications of utilizing subjective or objective risk indicators in hazard risk management tools. In the paper, I derive a single index each for subjective and objective risk using factor analysis, then integrate these indices with the discrete choice data from chapter 3. I then estimate conditional logit models to derive willingness to accept estimates to better understand how different risk indicator types affect hazard policy recommendations

The Effects of School Choice on Segregation of Finnish Comprehensive Schools

School choice was introduced to the current comprehensive schooling system in Finland during the mid-1990s as a result of several small policy changes. Student sorting is still mainly based on proximity, but students are allowed to apply to another school. The ease of applying and being accepted into other than your assigned school varies between municipalities. Even though the proportion of students exercising choice is considerable, the effects of the Finnish reform are relatively understudied and the research is mostly conducted by educational scientists, leaving out the logic of economics through which school choice was originally justified. The purpose of this thesis is to study the effects of school choice on segregation of schools using joint application data of ninth graders ending comprehensive school and applying to secondary education in 1996 to 2004. Segregation of schools is measured over time at municipal level using municipalities with at least two schools. The very well-known Duncan index and variation between schools are used to measure segregation of schools. Also, isolation index is used to measure segregation of schools by foreign speaking students. Indices are adjusted to measure segregation from randomness. The development of these measures is studied more closely for the Capital City region. In addition, fixed effects model is used to explain the segregation indices by the share of students attending local school and residential segregation. Segregation increases steadily from 1996 to 2004 in Helsinki by high school attendance, high school graduation and GPA. Segregation is lower and stays almost constant for Vantaa, where school choice has been more limited from the beginning. All measures for segregation of schools by foreign students for Helsinki and Vantaa are somewhat inconclusive. Using municipality fixed effects model to explain segregation indices by schools’ share of local students and residential segregation indicates that in cities with high share of students attending their neighborhood school segregation of schools by high school attendance and graduation decreases. However, results are insignificant for the rest of the measures and it seems that residential segregation explains the segregation of schools for all measures. Fixed effect model may suffer from endogeneity. The results indicate increasing segregation of schools by ability in Helsinki after the reform and the fixed effect model to some extent supports these findings. Measures are still quite moderate. More data on before the reform is required to make any causal interpretations on the effects of the school choice reform. The evidence suggests that the underlying residential segregation plays a key role in segregation of schools. School choice is believed to alleviate the pressure of ‘selection by mortgage’. Therefore, the effects of the reform on residential segregation should be studied before we consider limiting school choice in Finland.Kouluvalinnat rantautuivat Suomeen 90-luvulla vaiheittaisten lakiuudistusten seurauksena osana valtionhallinnon hajauttamista. Pääasiallisesti oppilaat jakautuvat edelleen kunnan osoittamiin lähikouluihin, mutta oppilas voi halutessaan pyrkiä toisen oppilaaksiottoalueen kouluun tai painotettuun opetukseen. Kouluvalintojen toteutus on kuntakohtaista ja toiseen kouluun hakemisen helppous vaihtelee. Vaikka kouluvalinnat ovat erityisen suosittuja isoissa kaupungeissa, kouluvalintareformin vaikutuksia on tutkittu hyvin vähän ja pääasiallisesti kasvatustieteilijöiden toimesta. Tämän tutkielman tarkoitus on tuoda taloustiede takaisin kouluvalintakeskusteluun Suomessa, sillä nykytutkimuksesta ja -keskusteluista jätetään pois taloustieteen logiikka, jolla kouluvalinnat on alun perin perusteltu. Tutkielma tarkastelee kouluvalintojen vaikutusta koulujen väliseen segregaatioon käyttäen yhteisvalintarekisteriaineistoa vuosien 1996 ja 2004 aikana peruskoulunsa päättävistä yhdeksäsluokkalaisista. Koulujen välinen segregaatio lasketaan vuosittain kuntatasolla. Segregaatiota mitataan keskiarvon, lukioon ja ylioppilaaksi pääsyn, sekä vieraan äidinkielen perusteella ja mittaamiseen käytetään Duncan indeksiä, koulujen välistä varianssia, sekä eristyneisyysindeksiä. Kaikki indeksit muokataan mittaamaan segregaatiota satunnaisuudesta. Segregaation kehitystä seurataan tarkemmin pääkaupunkiseudulla. Lisäksi kouluvalintojen vaikutusta segregaatioon tarkastellaan kiinteiden vaikutusten mallin avulla, jossa koulujen välistä segregaatiota selitetään kouluvalinnoilla ja alueellisella segregatiolla. Koulujen välinen segregaatio kasvaa Helsingissä vuosien 1996 ja 2004 välillä lukioon ja ylioppilaaksi pääsyn, sekä keskiarvon perusteella. Vantaalla, jossa kouluvalinnat ovat hyvin rajoitettuja, koulujen välinen segregaatio on alhaisempaa, eikä osoita kasvun merkkejä. Segregaatioindeksit vieraskielisten oppilaiden perusteella ovat samankaltaisia ja -suuruisia sekä Helsingissä että Vantaalla, eikä merkittävää kasvua ole havaittavissa. Regressiotulokset kiinteiden vaikutusten mallista osoittavat, että kunnan lähikoulua käyvien oppilaiden osuus vähentää koulujen välistä segregaatiota lukioon ja ylioppilaaksi pääsyn perusteella. Vaikutus on kuitenkin vähäinen ja muiden mallien estimaatit eivät ole merkitseviä. Sen sijaan alueellinen segregaatio selittää kaikissa malleissa merkitsevästi koulujen välistä segregaatiota. Regressiomalli saattaa kärsiä endogeenisyydestä ja aiheuttaa estimaatteihin vinoumaa. Koulujen välinen segregaatio oppilaiden osaamisen mukaan kasvaa Helsingissä kouluvalintareformin jälkeen, mutta päätelmiä kouluvalintojen ja lisääntyneen segregaation kausaalisuhteesta on vaikea tehdä. Koulujen välisen segregaation trendi ennen reformia tulisi selvittää lisäaineistoilla. Tulokset kuitenkin viittaavat siihen, että alueellinen segregaatio ohjaa koulujen välistä segregaatiota Suomessa. Viimeaikoina on esitetty kouluvalintojen rajoittamista koulujen välisten erojen pienentämiseksi. Ennen kuin valintoja rajoitetaan, niiden vaikutus alueelliseen segregaation tulisi selvittää, sillä kouluvalintojen rajoittaminen ei välttämättä vähennä koulujen välistä segregaatiota mahdollisten alueellisten segregaatiopaineiden takia

Building Blocks for Mapping Services

Mapping services are ubiquitous on the Internet. These services enjoy a considerable user base. But it is often overlooked that providing a service on a global scale with virtually millions of users has been the playground of an oligopoly of a select few service providers are able to do so. Unfortunately, the literature on these solutions is more than scarce. This thesis adds a number of building blocks to the literature that explain how to design and implement a number of features