Geospatial Frontiers in Health and Social Environments

描述(由申请人提供)：在过去的二十年里，在公共卫生科学研究中，地理空间工具和方法的使用急剧增加。从跟踪疾病爆发，到模拟环境风险对药物滥用的影响，再到了解社区环境特征如何影响肥胖和体力活动，地理空间方法正在改变与环境和背景对健康影响相关的研究。对这些方法的兴趣遍及社会和生物医学科学，以及NIH的不同研究所和中心。然而，尽管初步采用了它们，但大多数健康科学应用程序并没有充分利用空间和时空数据分析和建模的最新发展，或者正在变得可用的新类型的地理空间数据和计算资源。这些进展与三个相互关联的趋势有关：1)支持GPS的设备、分布式环境传感器系统、卫星遥感以及(可能)来自地理标记的电子病历的实时时空数据的爆炸性增长；2)开发用于分析时空数据的工具和方法，包括从日常到生命过程的地理可视化、时空建模、流行病学和人类流动性建模的方法；以及3)计算技术、面向服务的体系结构和网络基础设施的进步，这些进步正在推动称为地理空间网络或网络地理信息系统的分布式和协作服务的增长。这些被统称为地理信息科学(GIScience)的发展为健康和社会环境的研究带来了巨大的希望。实现这一潜力需要跨学科的方法，包括GIScience研究人员、社会和行为科学家以及生物医学研究人员之间的互动。提出了一系列三个跨学科的会议。将汇集地理科学、社会科学、公共卫生科学和生物医学科学的专家，他们的研究重点是健康以及社会和自然环境。其具体目标是：1)传播关于地理信息系统科学发展和与地理信息系统相关的卫生研究需求的信息；2)促进跨学科合作和通用术语；3)确定关键挑战，包括保持特定地点数据的机密性、分析不同质量的数据以及将时空数据与行为和遗传信息相结合；以及4)制定研究议程，以解决这些问题，并加强卫生科学中基于地理信息系统科学方法的整合和完善。 公共卫生相关性：地理信息科学(GIScience)的最新进展为健康和社会环境的研究带来了巨大的希望。具体而言，空间和时空研究、数据分析和建模以及新型地理空间数据和计算资源的发展是一个新的令人振奋的前沿。包括GIScience在内的健康科学研究的跨学科方法将促进使用更动态的方法和复杂的数据集，并导致对人与人(包括他们随时间的流动性)、他们的健康和环境之间的相互作用的更复杂和更全面的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The past two decades have seen dramatic increases in the use of geospatial tools and methods in public health sciences research. From tracking disease outbreaks, to modeling the impacts of environmental risks on substance abuse, to understanding how neighborhood environmental characteristics affect obesity and physical activity, geospatial methods are transforming research related to environmental and contextual effects on health. Interest in these methods cuts across the social and biomedical sciences, and across the diverse institutes and centers of NIH. Yet despite their tentative adoption, most health-science applications do not take full advantage of the latest developments in spatial and spatiotemporal data analysis and modeling, or the new types of geospatial data and computing resources that are becoming available. These advances are linked to three interrelated trends: 1) the explosion of real-time, spatiotemporal data from GPS-enabled devices, distributed environmental sensor systems, satellite remote sensing, and (potentially) from geographically tagged electronic medical records; 2) development of tools and methods for analyzing spatiotemporal data, including methods of geovisualization, spatiotemporal modeling, epidemiology, and modeling of human mobility at scales ranging from the everyday to the life course; and 3) advances in computing technologies, service-oriented architectures, and cyberinfrastructure that are fueling the growth of distributed and collaborative services known as the geospatial Web or cyberGIS. These developments, in what is collectively called geographic information science (GIScience), hold great promise for research on health and social environments. Achieving this potential requires an interdisciplinary approach that involves interactions among GIScience researchers, social and behavioral scientists, and biomedical researchers. A series of three interdisciplinary conferences are proposed. Experts in GIScience, social sciences, public health sciences, and biomedical sciences whose research focuses on health and social and natural environments will be assembled. The specific aims are to: 1) disseminate information on GIScience developments and on health research needs related to GIS; 2) foster interdisciplinary collaboration and common terminology; 3) identify key challenges, including such issues as maintaining confidentiality of location-specific data, analyzing data of varying quality, and integrating spatiotemporal data with behavioral and genetic information; and 4) develop a research agenda that will address these issues and enhance the integration and sophistication of GIScience-based approaches in the health sciences. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Recent advances in geographic information science (GIScience) hold great promise for research on health and social environments. Specifically, developments in spatial and spatiotemporal research, data analysis and modeling, together with new types of geospatial data and computing resources, represent a new and exciting frontier. An interdisciplinary approach to health sciences research that includes GIScience will foster the use of more dynamic approaches and complex data sets and lead to a more sophisticated and integrated understanding of the interactions between people (including their mobility over time), their health, and the environment.