Geospatial Technology, Public Health and its Vulnerability Assessment

Introduction

Changing climate, environmental pollution are leading to spread of various disease. Understanding the complexity of disease and its relationship with environmental pollution and metrological factors and its spatio-temporal relationships are essential for effective public health management program. The outbreak of diseases has major determining factor of climate like temperature, humidity and rainfall which causes death of over one million people from vector borne diseases around the world like dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria, West Nile Virus, Japanese encephalitis, and filariasis. The discipline of medical geography integrated with geographic information system provides a better understanding of causes and consequences of disease epidemics because it integrates both people and the environment [1].

During last few decades, with the development of Earth observation system and geographical information systems (GIS), monitoring meteorological, environmental and anthropogenic factors that influence the spread of vector-borne diseases (VBDs) has become easy [2–3].

GIS are computer-based tools used to store, visualize, analyze, and interpret geographic data. GIS combine computer assisted hardware, various software and its tool (spatial analysis, geo-statistics), ground truth data, sophisticated algorithms and which can be used and modelled. In General, Every GIS is structured around five basic components; (i) Geo-referenced data, (ii) the hardware- for processing and storing big data. (iii) the software assembling the user-interface algorithms by inclusion of various ground truth data and other georeferenced data (iv) the algorithms and data management procedures; and (v) the people, both producers and consumers of spatial data (https://www.cise.ufl.edu/~mssz/GIS/GIS-Basics.html). Diagrammatic representation of benefits of GIS is given below in fig.1

Geographic information System (GIS) has been used worldwide in Public health Studies which includes- 1. Identifying areas where a particular disease is prevalent; 2. Quantifying Vulnerable Population and its spatial dynamics 3. Factors responsible for diseases i.e source cum receptor identification (water, soil and air pollution, vector borne diseases ets); 4. Quantification of morbidity and mortality rates; 5. Identify health care centres and surveillance and management plan.

R and D status of the work

Use of GIS were started in early 1990s, where it has been used as an important tool for strategic planning and management in hospitals of US. Analytical studies of patient origins and resident destinations, health facility site locating, and market demographic analysis were the most useful applications.

GIS has been used to process health data, analyze geographical and its spatial distribution, hotspot or vulnerable areas, factor responsible for vulnerability, probable area for disease and its mapping, surveillance, and epidemic disease management [4], [5]. Location-based analyses, such as disease risk mapping, identifying disease-sensitive areas, and illness clustering, can aid in disease management and prevention [6]. By identifying the disease’s vulnerable locations and updating the risk maps, it is possible to have a sufficient grasp of the situation.

Public health workers, researcher and Health management planners are using GIS to understand spatial relation of disease spread and its presentation capabilities. They use various thematic maps of resources such as health facility, various structures such as locations of landfills, reservoirs, rivers, topography of regions, and climate factors to understand this dynamics. Recent outbreak of Ebola epidemic was successfully controlled by using GIS and satellite images [7]. GIS has also been used to map the transmission of various mosquito vector borne diseases such as Malaria, Dengue, and, most recently, Zika [8–9].

The most recent outbreak of Corona Virus was monitored with GIS, GPS and other satellite-mediated technology which were crucial to detect the hotspots to understand the dynamic and evolution of infection [10–11].

The spatial statistical analyst of GIS can also be used to quantify vector habitat suitability; for example, niche modelling[12–13], generalised linear mixed models and linear regression model [14–15], non-linear equations [16] are among other techniques that have been used to model vector suitability across various spatial scales. Very recently, MAXENT algorithm has been used for species distribution modelling, even with limited data [14,17].

3. Various GIS software

Various software has been used to process large and robust data to integrate various thematic map and quantification of spatial dynamics. Various software such as ArcView, ArcGIS, ILWIS, ERDAS IMAGINE, AutoCad, and Integraph etc are used, which are frequently used in health sector.

Benefits of GIS

The disease outbreak can be understood under some categories of GIS supported tool with different themes.

Current limitation with the use of computation and GIS

It has been pointed out that while GIS is a powerful tool for location allocation, characterization of population, spatial models, it does not provide the groundbreaking insights of disease dynamics over time and space [24]. GIS and its spatial analytical techniques are limited to static snaps of disease occurrence; furthermore these techniques have been developed for non-medical usage therefore not well suited to health researcher [25].

Summary

In conclusion, researchers are now able to visualize trends and monitor infectious disease and its relationships over time and space. It connects people with local resources and governing factors. It helps to identify vulnerable people and community and understand the cluster of disease and causes. Thus it improves our response. This also helps in strengthening the collaboration between different agencies and relief measures.

It can also track the impact of government policies like those intended to reduce health inequalities. Thus if healthcare professional begin to adopt and integrate GIS in their work connectivity between hospitals and the communities they serve become easier.

References

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