GIS & Remote Sensing in Public Health

Spring semesters
Public Health 274
3 Units

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) 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.

If interested in this course, please contact Dr. Seto for more information 
 

Instructor:

 

Edmund Seto
717 University Hall
510-642-9219
seto@berkeley.edu

Class Format:

Instruction will consist of roughly 1/2 lectures and 1/2 case studies and exercises, 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.

Schedule

Week

Date

Tuesday

Thursday

1 1/18 Overview/Intro  Getting to know GIS Lab *
2 1/25 Spatial Data GIS Data Lab *
3 2/1 Spatial Analysis Spatial Stats Lab *
4 2/8 Census Data Geocoding Lab *
5 2/15 Geocoding Public Health Data  Intro Remote Sensing
6 2/22 Remote Sensing Preprocessing & Image Enhancement Remote Sensing Lab 1 *
7 3/1 Remote Sensing Classification Remote Sensing Lab 2 *
8 3/8  Remote Sensing Lab 3 * Disease Ecology & Infectious Diseases
9 3/15 Infectious Diseases Spatial Modeling Lab *
10 3/22 - Spring Break! - 
[ info on final project ]
11 3/29 Cancer Epidemiology  Cluster Analysis Lab *
12 4/5 Environmental Health Environmental Justice
13 4/12 Interpolation & Buffer Analysis Lab * Environmental Justice Lab *
14 4/19 Healthcare Access  Project Lab
15 4/26 Project Lab Project Lab
16 5/3 Project Presentations Project Presentations
17 5/10 Project Presentations

Readings

[ Contact Instructor ]

Projects

[ Link to project titles and maps from Spring 2003 ]

[ Link to project titles and maps from Spring 2004 ]

[ Link to project titles and maps from Spring 2004 ]


Spatial Data

[ Contact Instructor ]

Suggested Texts and Periodicals:

Cromley E., 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, 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