Abstract
Abstract. During the last 20 years we have seen the re-emergence of diseases; emergence of new diseases in new locations and witnessed outbreaks of varying intensity and duration. Spatial epidemiology plays an important role in understanding the patterns of disease and how they change over time and across space.The aim of this paper is to bring together a public health and geospatial data science perspective to provide a framework that will facilitate the integration of geographic information and spatial analyses at different stages of public health response so that these data and methods can be effectively used to enhance surveillance and monitoring, intervention strategies (planning and implementation of a response) and facilitate both short- and long-term forecasting.To demonstrate elements of this framework and how it can be utilized, we selected three case studies ranging from the current the global COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 to more historical examples such as the John Snow Cholera outbreak of 1854 and the Ebola outbreak of 2014 in West Africa.A variety of methods including spatial descriptive statistics, as well as methods for analysing patterns were used. The examples we provide can reveal sources of infection, connectivity between locations, delineate zones of containment and show the spread of an outbreak globally and locally across space and time.
Highlights
During the past 20 years we have seen the emergence and re-emergence of many diseases (Figure 1), many in new locations including the current pandemic, COVID19 (Figure 2).A key component of staying healthy is to minimize our risk of getting sick
Patterns influencing health and disease in the environment are complex and require an understanding of the ecology of the disease, how these interact in space and time), and how diseases may move through the landscape so that we can respond, and recover in a timely manner
As technologies continue to evolve and different geographic data becomes available, how can we better incorporate these into a process that can help public health practitioners evaluate disease and health risks both in the short and long term? Essentially, how do we train epidemiologists in geography and geospatial technologies and methods? To address this, we have centred our evaluation around a public health response cycle that encompasses several steps important for investigating, evaluating, and managing disease incidence and outbreaks, as described in [42, 50,51,52] and summarized in Table 2a-c from a number of different reviews
Summary
During the past 20 years we have seen the emergence and re-emergence of many diseases (Figure 1), many in new locations including the current pandemic, COVID19 (Figure 2).A key component of staying healthy is to minimize our risk of getting sick. Patterns influencing health and disease in the environment are complex and require an understanding of the ecology of the disease (agent, host, environment), how these interact in space and time), and how diseases may move through the landscape (mobility, connectivity, and dispersion pathways) so that we can respond (plan and implement control and prevention), and recover (seek diagnosis, prevent, and provide treatment) in a timely manner. We need to think simultaneously about how a disease agent and the host interact at various spatial and temporal scales in a dynamically changing environment and what the outcome of such changes may be
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