Geospatial Frontiers in Health and Social Environments

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去的二十年里，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，再到了解邻里环境特征如何影响肥胖和身体活动，地理空间方法正在改变与环境和环境对健康影响相关的研究。 对这些方法的兴趣跨越了社会和生物医学科学，以及NIH的各个研究所和中心。然而，尽管他们暂时采用，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，或新类型的地理空间数据和计算资源正在变得可用。这些进展与三个相互关联的趋势有关：1）来自GPS设备的实时时空数据爆炸，分布式环境传感器系统，卫星遥感，（潜在地）来自地理标记的电子医疗记录; 2）开发分析时空数据的工具和方法，包括地理可视化，时空建模，流行病学，从日常生活到生命过程的人类移动性建模; 3）计算技术、面向服务的体系结构和网络基础设施的进步，这些进步推动了分布式和协作服务（称为地理空间Web或网络GIS）的发展。 这些发展统称为地理信息科学（GIScience），为健康和社会环境研究带来了巨大的希望。实现这一潜力需要跨学科的方法，涉及GIScience研究人员，社会和行为科学家，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。GIScience，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，社会和自然环境将被组装。具体目标是：1）传播有关GIS科学发展和与GIS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，包括维护特定位置数据的机密性，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等问题;以及4）制定一个研究议程，解决这些问题，并加强健康科学中基于地理信息系统科学的方法的整合和复杂性。 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代表了一个令人兴奋的新领域。包括GIScience在内的跨学科健康科学研究方法将促进使用更动态的方法和复杂的数据集，并导致对人与人之间的相互作用（包括他们随时间的流动性），他们的健康和环境的更复杂和综合的理解。

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.