Geography 5190/6190 GIS and Environmental Health (Fall 2006, 3 units)

Lecture: Tuesdays (OSH215) & Thursdays (OSH273) 9:10-10:30 AM

Web page: http://nature.berkeley.edu/~bingxu/UU/health/

Instructor

Bing Xu OSH 211 585-3833 bing.xu@geog.utah.edu Office Hours: Tuesdays 10:30-11:30am, Thursdays 3:30-4:30 PM or by appointment

Holidays 10/5, 11/23

Instruction ends 12/7

Course Objectives:

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing in public health. Selected case studies will be presented in order to highlight principles, methods, and techniques. Topics include making effective disease surveillance maps, color theory and visualization, global positioning system (GPS), remote sensing data acquisition, visualization, classification, and accuracy assessment. Relevant studies will be presented for students interested in the link between ecology and disease, infectious disease control, cancer cluster detection, environmental health and justice. Hands-on exercises and a project will provide practical experience in the use of GIS and RS software tools and methods for spatial analysis.

Class Format:

Instruction will consist of roughly 1/2 lectures (mainly on Tuesdays) and 1/2 case studies and exercises (Thursdays), and project work. Exercises are designed to provide students with familiarity with using GIS and RS software, and practical experience in using spatial analyses to solve real public health problems.  The project consists of a health-related mapping & analysis project of the student's own choice and interest.

Evaluation and Grading Policies:

Lab exercises: 10 points each10 = 100 points

Project presentation (12/6, 12/8): 30 points

Project report (12/15): 70 points

Total: 200 points

A general guide to grading that we approximately follow but will be adjusted according to the class overall performance:

A ≥ 90%

B ≥ 80% and <90%

C ≥ 70% and <80%

D ≥ 60% and <70%

F <60%

Suggested Texts and Periodicals:

Meade MS, and Earickson RJ. Medical Geography. The Guilford Publications, New York, 2000

Cromley EK, and McLafferty SL. GIS and Public Health. The Guilford Press, New York, 2002

Melnick AL. Introduction to geographic information systems in public health. Gaithersburg, Md.: Aspen Publishers; 2002.

Elliott P., Wakefield J., Best N., Briggs D. Spatial Epidemiology Methods and Applications. New York. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Bailey TC and Gatrell AC. Interactive spatial data analysis. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman; 1995.

Gong P. Remote sensing and image analysis : http://nature.berkeley.edu/~gong/textbook

Jensen J. Introductory Digital Image Processing, A Remote Sensing Perspective. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall; 1996.

Lillesand T. M. and R. W. Kiefer. Remote sensing and image interpretation. New York, John Wiley & Sons, 2000.

Public Health GIS News and Information : http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/otheract/gis/gis_publichealthinfo.htm

International Journal of Health Geographics: http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/start.asp

Health & Place: http://www.elsevier.com/inca/publications/store/3/0/5/1/9/index.htt

Readings

[ Link to readings here ]

Previous Projects

[ Link to project titles and maps from Spring 2003, students at UC Berkeley ]

Data:

Suggestion: Take a look at chapter 2 of Melnick's book.

CDC National Center for Health Stats: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/default.htm

CDC Wonder: http://wonder.cdc.gov/

WHO (a starting point for global data): http://www.who.int/research/en/

EPA Geospatial Data: http://www.epa.gov/nsdi/

Census: http://www.census.gov    (ESRI-compatible formats can be downloaded from within ArcGIS-Arcmap)

Remote Sensing-based data: http://edc.usgs.gov

Climate Data: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html

USGS water data: http://water.usgs.gov/index.html

USGS Geoscience data: http://geo-nsdi.er.usgs.gov/

National Geospatial Data Clearinghouse: http://clearinghouse1.fgdc.gov/

Digital Chart of the World http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/

Tentative Schedule

Week	Date	Tuesdays session	Date	Thursdays session	Readings
1			8/24	Overview/Introduction	Week 1
2	8/29	Intro to GIS & Public Health	8/31	Getting to know GIS Lab	Cromley Chp 2, 3
3	9/5	Spatial Data	9/7	GIS Data Lab	Cromley Chp 4
4	9/12	Invited talk – Dr. Wu Xu, Utah Department of Health	9/14	Geocoding Lab	Cromley Chp 5; Week 4
5	9/19	Census Data, spatial operation	9/21	Geocoding Public Health Data	Week5
6	9/26	Spatial Analysis	9/28	Spatial Stats Lab	Optional: Spatial point data analysis Final project and proposal description
7	10/3	Remote Sensing Introduction and Applications	10/5 Holiday		Week7
8	10/10	A remote Sensing Process	10/12	Remote Sensing Intro Lab	Week 8
9	10/17	Information Extraction from Remotely Sensed Data	10/19	Georeferencing Lab
10	10/24	Image classification methods	10/26	Image Classification Lab
11	10/31	Ecology of Disease	11/2	Spatial Modeling Lab	Week 11
12	11/7	Cancer Epidemiology	11/9	Cluster Detection Lab SatScan	Week 12
13	11/14	Environmental Health	11/16	Environmental Health and Justice Lab	Week 13
14	11/21	Infectious Diseases	11/23 Holiday
15	11/28	Applications on environmental health	11/30	Screen capture software: Capture by George
16	12/5	Project Presentations Jennifer, Ryan,	12/7	Project Presentations Laura, Adam, Wade, Ben
17	12/12		12/14	Project Report Due by email

ADA Statement

The University of Utah seeks to provide equal access to its programs, services and activities for people with disabilities. If you will need accommodations in the class, reasonable prior notice needs to be given to the Center for Disability Services, 162 Olpin Union Building, 581-5020 (V/TDD). CDS will work with you and the instructor to make arrangements for accommodations.

All written information in this course can be made available in alternative format with prior notification to the Center for Disability Services.