EPIDEMIOLOGICAL GIS: Understanding Emerging Critical Issues

Abstract

This paper examines the roles of GIS in epidemiological research, andidentifies needs for spatial epidemiology. It argues that the objectivefunction of spatial epidemiology is to identify patterns and correlates it to geospecific variat ion in health risks incidences. GISsupports disease mapping, location analysis, the characterization of populations, spatial statistics and simulat ion modeling. Despite these flurries of applicat ions, they are yet to sufficiently identify disease causes and correlates.This is partly because of the failure of GIS to provide tools appropriate forepidemiological research and analysis. Hence, the need to review our understanding towards the relationship between causes of a disease and its spatio-temporal informat ion. Thus the need for a design and implementation of a space-time informat ion systems and process-based disease models for epidemiology