Web-based Geospatial Tool Research Articles

Centroid-amenities

Planning for civic amenities in a fast-changing urban setting such as Singapore is never an easy task. And as urban planners look toward more data-driven approaches toward urban planning, so grows the demand for more flexible geospatial analytics tools to facilitate a more iterative and granular approach toward urban planning [1]. Such specific tools however, are not always readily available as plugins for traditional desktop GIS software, as numerous customizations must be made to model specific temporal planning scenarios for quick analysis, which could prove both costly and time-consuming. Hence, to address this need, open-source tools such as R Shiny could be used to rapidly prototype and test urban planning models, in an iterative fashion. To demonstrate how this could be done, we developed a proof-of-concept that aims to provide urban planners with an open-source, interactive geospatial analytics tool to help optimize the placement of amenities and services through K-means clustering, making them as accessible as possible to the city residents they serve. The platform also allows planners to compare the accessibility of the existing amenities and services, against a suggested set of optimized amenity locations, using the Hansen Accessibility Score as a measure of accessibility. This allows planners a tangible grasp on how much of an impact and improvement a relocation of amenities could make for the residents served. This paper details our research and development efforts to design and implement an open-source web-based geospatial tool for supporting the analysis of the accessibility of amenities and services.

The Geoweb for community-based organizations: Tool development, implementation, and sustainability in an era of Google Maps

Recent advances in web-based geospatial tools (the Geoweb) show promise as low-cost and easy-to-use methods to support citizen participation. This research presents two case studies of Geoweb implementation set in community-based organizations in rural Quebec, Canada. When comparing the development and sustainability of each Geoweb tool, the implementation time frame plays a key role. Two implementation time frames are defined; a discrete, or ‘one-off’ time frame associated with lower resource requirements, and a continuous, or ongoing time frame, that has a higher total resource cost, but can fulfill a different set of goals than a discrete implementation.

Letter from the New Editor-in-Chief: My Perspective on Environmental Health Perspectives.

Letter from the New Editor-in-Chief: My Perspective on Environmental Health Perspectives.

A web-based geospatial toolkit for the monitoring of dengue fever

The rapid propagation of vector-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, poses a threat to vulnerable populations, especially those in tropical regions. Prompt space-time analyses are critical elements for accurate outbreak detection and mitigation purposes. Open access web-based geospatial tools are particularly critical in developing countries lacking GIS software and expertise. Currently, online geospatial tools for the monitoring of surveillance data are confined to the mapping of aggregated data. In this paper, we present a web-based geospatial toolkit with a user-friendly interactive interface for the monitoring of dengue fever outbreaks, in space and time. Our geospatial toolkit is designed around the integration of (1) a spatial data management module in which epidemiologists upload spatio-temporal explicit data, (2) an analytical module running an accelerated Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) to map the outbreaks of dengue fever, (3) a spatial database module to extract pairs of disease events close in space and time and (4) a GIS mapping module to visualize space-time linkages of pairs of disease events. We illustrate our approach on a set of dengue fever cases which occurred in Cali (659 geocoded cases), an urban environment in Colombia. Results indicate that dengue fever cases are significantly clustered, but the degree of intensity varies across the city. The design and implementation of the on-line toolkit underscores the benefits of the approach to monitor vector-borne disease outbreaks in a timely manner and at different scales, facilitating the appropriate allocation of resources. The toolkit is designed collaboratively with health epidemiologists and is portable for other surveillance data at the individual level such as crime or traffic accidents.

Web-Based and Geospatially Enabled Risk Screening Tool for Water and Wastewater Pipeline Infrastructure Systems

This paper focuses on the development of a web-based geospatial tool as a proof of concept to assist water utilities in performing a network-level risk screening of their buried water and wastewater pipeline infrastructure systems. This tool provides a preliminary risk screening at a high level to quickly identify problematic (hot spot) areas and help guide decisions about where to further analyze pipeline infrastructure systems. The tool employs a prototypical heuristic risk model developed with the involvement of five experts from the industry, with the primary intent of running the tool and assessing potential industry value. A case study of the tool results and utility feedback are presented. The web-based geospatial tool developed in this research enables the risk screening model results to be visualized and queried in a user-friendly, interactive environment for usefulness at the network level among water utilities.