Today, we discussed the different applications of GIS and reviewed the three major topics that will be reviewed in this course, which will be Health Geography, Crime and Landscape Ecology. Brian reminded us that GIS is often used in these fields to identify potential spatial patterns, such as hot spots and clusters. GIS effectively attempts to model the interactions occurring within an environment. In Landscape Ecology we will be looking at how the landscape affects and reacts with abiotic and biotic processes. In Health Geography there are three major facets where GIS application is especially useful; disease ecology, health care delivery, and the environment and health. Using GIS we can model things like the spread of infectious disease, the accessibility of health care facilities in a region, or the potential geography of pollutants in an environment, and all of these applications are related to Health Geography. Finally, we will also explore how GIS can be used in Crime analysis. Specific crimes can present spatial patterns and crime is always related to environmental factors such as population density and geographies of opportunity.

Think spatially!