Introduction
There is an interrelation between GIS and three fields: ecology, health geography and crime. The use of GIS technology can be applied to solve problems in those studies.
There are also 5 P’s that are linked to one another, and the people to the environment. They are: People, Perspective, Processes, Patterns, and Places.
Why is Geography Important
The lecture discusses the significance of geography to all fields of research. Spatial characteristics and relationships can play a role in analyses therefore researchers must be mindful of their focus and study area. Issues that arise and should be explored include the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP); scale, grain and extent; nature of boundaries; and spatial dependence/heterogeneity.
Important terms:
- Grain: minimum resolution of the data.
- Extent: scope or domain of the data.
- Modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP): common problem resulting from scale and aggregation issues. It is the uncertainty about the constitution of objects of spatial analysis and the methods that are used.
Understanding Landscape Metrics: Patterns and Processes
Landscape ecology is explored in this lecture which determines spatial patterns and interactions within ecosystems. Fragstats is a focus of the course used for quantifying landscape patterns and statistics.
Some important terms:
- First order process: Pattern develops as a result of a response to factors such as environmental.
- Second order process: Stationary if processes do not change over space and time.
Processes can be grouped as biotic, abiotic and disturbance. Where biotic interactions include competition, abiotic include climate, and disturbances as patterns of the past and current.
Statistics: Review
Statistics is important for summarizing, exploring and modelling relationships to predict data. Two concepts in statistics is the measure of central tendency and variation. There are more advanced techniques such as regression. Simple regression contains one or more dependent variables and independent variables predicting the relationship among them. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) is a model that can help predict these relationships.
What is Health Geography?
There are three main themes of health geography (Jamie Baxter): disease ecology, health care delivery, and environment and health.
Disease ecology: study of infectious diseases including the spatial distribution of them.
Health care delivery: spatial patterns of health care provision and patient behaviour including issues such as inequalities and de-institutionalization.
Environment and health: environmental risk assessment as well as the physical and psychosocial health impacts of contamination.
GIS and Health Geography
The lecture expands on some ideas on the previous lecture. It is important to note technology and GIS can assist in health geography. Spatial epidemiology is introduced as the concern in describing and understanding spatial variation in disease risk. There are multiple ways GIS interacts with health geography, through the relationship between health and location, disease occurrence, and mortality rate.
Is Crime Related to Geography?
The use of GIS in crime analysis plays a big role in helping law enforcement agencies understand and visualize crime occurrences and its locations to determine spatial patterns. Crime mapping can aid in reducing crime in cities. Some analysis methods include hot spot analysis and using CrimeStat to analyze the geography of crime.
The Use of GIS by Fire Departments
The lecture discusses how GIS is used by the Calgary Fire Department (CFD). The CFD used GIS to determine the most suitable location for stations and fire hydrant coverage locations. GIS is used in multiple fields like risk analysis, response mapping, station planning, and decision making.