Abstract
The goal of this chapter is to illustrate how complex issues in environmental health justice analysis can benefit from geovisualization and exploration within a Geographic Information Science (GISc) framework. Individual health outcome variables, such as hospitalizations due to respiratory disease, can be very difficult to interpret without a geographic context; and interactions amongst variables such as disease, socio-demographic characteristics, or environmental exposures, further complicate an accurate interpretation of the data. Data exploration and visualization through mapping and spatial analysis often provides a more robust understanding of the data, as well as improved clarity in viewing the phenomena under study, which will lead to better design of further analyses and additional hypothesis generation, in an iterative fashion. In the first part of this chapter, we use a hypothetical data set to illustrate some of the data exploration, geovisualization, statistical methods, and geospatial analyses. In the second part of the chapter, we use a worked example of respiratory disease and socio-demographic variables in New York City to assess potential environmental justice impacts, in order to further demonstrate the importance of geovisualization and geospatial analysis in achieving a better understanding of environmental health issues.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter resulted from on-going research, partially supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cooperative Remote Sensing Science and Technology Center (NOAA-CREST) under NOAA grant number NA17AE162. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences of the National Institutes of Health also provided critical support for this research under grant number 2 R25 ES01185-05. The National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health also helped fund this research as part of the Bronx CREED (the Bronx Center to Reduce and Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities) under grant P60-MD0005-03. The statements contained within this paper are not the opinions of the funding agencies or the US. government, but reflect the authors’ opinions. Thanks are also due to the member organizations of the South Bronx Environmental Justice Partnership, who understood the relevance of this research to environmental health justice and gave their unstinting encouragement and assistance in the effort.
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Maroko, A., Maantay, J.A., Grady, K. (2011). Using Geovisualization and Geospatial Analysis to Explore Respiratory Disease and Environmental Health Justice in New York City. In: Maantay, J., McLafferty, S. (eds) Geospatial Analysis of Environmental Health. Geotechnologies and the Environment, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0329-2_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0329-2_2
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