Data Mining and GIS Spatial Analysis to Study Epidemiological Trends in Asthma

医学地理学是地理学和医学之间的跨学科合作，利用地理信息系统（GIS）应用地理方法研究疾病分布，其中包含可与医院和县卫生数据交叉链接的信息，以检查癌症和哮喘等慢性疾病与空气质量和其他环境危害之间的关系。地理信息系统目前有大量的环境数据，但这些数据在调查慢性健康问题方面没有得到充分利用。当地医院为哮喘患者提供紧急治疗，患者地址可以与地理信息交叉链接。健康数据可以与地理信息相关联，以确定空气和水质与哮喘紧急情况之间的关系。标准的统计方法不能轻易地应用于复杂的观测数据。因此，分析将使用数据挖掘技术，包括人工神经网络、可视化和核密度估计。结构方程模型检验因果流。调查员将与地理/地球科学系的地理学家和卫生研究人员合作，扩大技能，包括地理信息系统和软件的知识，并利用这些技能检查与环境因素有关的慢性疾病的流行病学。所研究的方法可应用于许多慢性疾病。该IGMS项目由MPS多学科活动办公室（OMA）和数学科学司（DMS）联合支持。

Medical geography is an interdisciplinary collaboration between geography and medicine to apply geographic methods to study disease distributions using the geographical information systems (GIS) containing information that can be cross-linked to hospital and county health data to examine the relationship between chronic diseases such as cancer and asthma and air quality and other environmental hazards. Substantial environmental data are currently available in the GIS, but the data are underutilized in investigating chronic health problems. Local hospitals provide emergency treatment for asthma for patients and patient addresses can be cross-linked to geographic information. Health data can be correlated to the geographic information to determine the relationships between air and water quality, and asthma emergencies. Standard statistical methods cannot be readily applied to the complex, observational data. Therefore, the analysis will use data mining techniques, including artificial neural networks, visualization, and kernel density estimation. Structural equation modeling examines the causal flow. The investigator will work with geographers in the Department of Geography/Geosciences and with health researchers to expand skills to include knowledge of the GIS system and software, and to use those skills to examine the epidemiology of chronic diseases related to environmental factors. The methods studied can be applied to many chronic diseases. This IGMS project is jointly supported by the MPS Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA) and the Division of Mathematical Sciences (DMS).