Abstract
Modern epidemiology is founded on a tradition of spatial analysis. The genesis of this discipline can be traced to the classic work of John Snow and the Broad Street pump. During the 1850s, cholera outbreaks were an important cause of morbidity and mortality amongst the inhabitants of London. Using simple dot maps and visualization, Snow provided compelling evidence that cases were clustered and that fecal-contaminated drinking water might be the cause of some cholera outbreaks. During the intervening 150 years, spatial epidemiology (alternatively called landscape epidemiology and more broadly, medical geography) has developed into a field within its own right. During the past two decades, advances in geographic information systems and statistical methods for analyzing spatially-referenced health data has allowed epidemiologists to routinely perform spatial analyses. Some of the most beneficial advances in spatial epidemiology have been in the areas of data visualization, detection of disease clusters, identification of spatial risk factors, application of predictive models, and the routine incorporation of GIS into disease surveillance programs. In this chapter, approaches used in spatial epidemiology will be described. Some specific techniques that are currently popular in the discipline will be presented. Several case studies will be used to highlight the application of these techniques within the field of spatial epidemiology and to illustrate the potential value of this discipline to public health and homeland security. The chapter will conclude by considering some of the major obstacles that remain to the consolidation of spatial analysis as a foundation of modern epidemiology, including the availability and quality of spatial disease data, information on the distributions of the populations at-risk, and integration of methods seamlessly into epidemiologic software packages.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Alexander, D.J. (2000). A review of avian influenza in different bird species. Veterinary Microbiology, 74, 3–13.
Alexander, D.J. (2001). Orthomyxoviridae–Avian influenza. (In F. Jordan, M. Pattison, D. Alexander, & T. Flanagan (Eds.), Poultry diseases (5th ed.) London: WB Saunders).
Anselin, L. (1995). Local indicators of spatial association-LISA. Geographical Analysis, 27, 93–115.
Bates, T.W., Thurmond, M.C. & Carpenter, T.E. (2003). Description of an epidemic simulation model for use in evaluating strategies to control an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. American Journal of Veterinary Research, 64, 195–204.
Birnbaum, N., Barr, S.C., Center, S.A., Schermerhorn, T., Randolph, J.F. & Simpson, K.W. (1998). Naturally acquired leptospirosis in 36 dogs: Serological and clinicopathological features. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 39, 231–236.
Bithell, J.F. (1995). The choice of test for detecting raised disease risk near a point source. Statistics in Medicine, 14, 2309–2322.
Bithell, J.F., Dutton, S.J., Draper, G.J. & Neary, N.M. (1994). The distribution of childhood leukemias and non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas near nuclear installations in England and Wales. British Medical Journal, 309, 501–505.
Bolin, C.A. (1996). Diagnosis of leptospirosis: A reemerging disease of companion animals. Seminars in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery (Small Animal), 11, 166–171.
Castillo-Olivares, J. & Wood, J. (2004). West Nile virus infection of horses. Veterinary Research, 35, 467–483.
Clark, P.J. & Evans, F.C. (1954). Distance to nearest neighbor as a measure of spatial relationships in populations. Ecology, 35, 445–453.
Cuzick, J. & Edwards, R. (1990). Spatial clustering for inhomogenous populations. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B 52, 73–104.
Dexter, N. (2003). Stochastic models of foot and mouth disease in feral pigs in the Australian semi-arid rangelands. Journal of Applied Ecology, 40, 293–306.
Diuk-Wasser, M.A., Gatewood, A.G., Cortinas, M.R., Yaremych-Hamer, S., Tsao, J., Kitron, U., Hickling, G., Brownstein, J.S., Walker, E., Piesman, J. & Fish., D. (2006). Spatiotemporal patterns of host-seeking Ixodes scapularis nymphs (Acari: Ixodidae) in the United States. Journal of Medical Entomology, 43, 166–176.
Doran, R.J. & Laffan, S.W. (2005). Simulating the spatial dynamics of foot and mouth disease outbreaks in feral pigs and livestock in Queensland, Australia, using a Susceptible-Infected-Recovered Cellular Automata model. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 70, 133–152.
East, I.J., Hamilton, S.A. & Garner M.G. (2007). Identification of Australian poultry rearing areas at high risk of exposure to avian influenza. Proceedings of the GisVet’07 Conference, Copenhagen, 22–24 August.
Ederer, F., Myers, M.H. & Mantel, N. (1964). A statistical problem in space and time: Do leukemia cases come in clusters? Biometrics, 20, 626–638.
Elliot, P., Wakefield, J.C., Best, N.G. & Briggs, D.J. (2000). Spatial epidemiology: Methods and applications. (In P. Elliot, J.C. Wakefield, N.G. Best & D.J. Briggs (Eds.), Spatial epidemiology: Methods and applications. New York: Oxford University Press).
English, D. (1992). Geographical epidemiology and ecological studies. (In P. Elliott, J. Cuzick, D. English & R. Stern (Eds.), Geographical and environmental epidemiology: Methods for small-area studies. New York: Oxford University Press).
Fletcher, J. (2004). Foot and mouth disease in deer. (In Proceedings of the Deer Branch of the New Zealand Veterinary Association. World Deer Veterinary Congress).
Ferguson, N.M., Donnelly, C.A. & Anderson, R.M. (2001). The foot and mouth epidemic in Great Britain: Pattern of spread and impact of interventions. Science, 292, 1155–1160.
Garner, M.G. & Beckett, S.D. (2005) Modelling the spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Australia. Australian Veterinary Journal, 83, 758–766.
Geary, RC (1954). The contiguity ratio and statistical mapping. The Incorporated Statistician, 5, 115–145.
Gerbier, G., Bacro, J.N., Pouillot, R., Durand, B., Moutou, F. & Chadoeuf, J. (2002). A point pattern model of the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 56, 33–49.
Getis, A. & Ord, J.K. (1992). The analysis of spatial association by use of distance statistics. Geographical Analysis, 24, 189–206.
Hanson, L.E. (1982). Leptospirosis in domestic animals: The public health. Journal of American Veterinary Medicine Association, 181, 1505–1509.
Keeling, M.J., Woolhouse, M.E.J., Shaw, D.J., Matthews, L., Chase-Topping, M., Haydon, D.T., Cornel, S.J., Kappey, J., Wilesmith, J. & Grenfell, B.T. (2001). Dynamics of the 2001 UK foot and mouth epidemic: Stochastic dispersal in a heterogeneous landscape. Science, 294, 813–817.
Knox, G. (1964). The detection of space-time interactions. Applied Statistics, 13, 25–29.
Krauss, S., Walker, D., Pryor, S.P., Niles, L., Chenghong, L., Hinshaw, V.S. & Webser, R.G. (2004). Influenza A viruses of migrating wild aquatic birds in North America. Vector-borne and Zoonotic Diseases, 4, 177–189.
Kulldorff, M. (2006). SaTScan â„¢ version 6.1.2. Software for the spatial and space-time scan statistics [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.satscan.org/.
Kulldorff, M. & Nagarwalla, N. (1995). Spatial disease clusters: Detection and inference. Statistics in Medicine, 14, 799–810.
Kulldorff, M., Athas, W.F., Feuer, E.J., Miller, B.A. & Key. C.R. (1998). Evaluating cluster alarms: A space-time scan statistic and brain cancer in Los Alamos. American Journal of Public Health, 88, 1377–1380.
Last, J.M. (2001). A dictionary of epidemiology (4th ed.). (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
McVicar, J.W., Sutmoller, P., Ferris, D.H. & Campbell, C.H. (1974). Foot and mouth disease in white-tailed deer: Clinical signs and transmission in the laboratory. Proceedings of the 78th Annual Meeting of the US Animal Health Association, 169–180.
Miller, R., Farnsworth, M., Kendall, W., Doherty, P., Nichols, J., White, G., Burnham, K., Franklin, A. & Freier, J. (2007). Risk-based targeted surveillance: Identifying areas and populations of importance for surveillance of High Path Avian Influenza in the United States. Proceedings of the GisVet’07 Conference, Copenhagen, 22–24 August.
Moran, P.A.P. (1950). Notes on continuous stochastic phenomena. Biometrika, 37, 17–23.
Morris, R.S., Wilesmith, J.W., Stern, M.W., Sanson, R.L. & Stevenson, M.A. (2001). Predictive spatial modelling of alternative control strategies for the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in Great Britain. Veterinary Record, 149, 137–144.
Naus, J.I. (1965). The distribution of the size of the maximum cluster of points on a line. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 60, 532–538.
Naus, J.I. (1966). A power comparison of two tests of non-random clustering. Technometric, 8, 493–517.
Oden, N. (1995). Adjusting Moran’s I for population density. Statistics in Medicine, 14, 17–26.
Office International des Epizooties. (1999). (In B.Toma, J-P. Vaillancourt, B. Dufour, M. Eloit, F. Moutou, W. Marsh, J-J. Bénet, M. Sanaa & P. Michel (Eds.), Dictionary of veterinary epidemiology. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press).
O’Sullivan, D. & Unwin, D.J. (2003). The pitfalls and potential of spatial data. Geographic information analysis. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley).
Paterson, A.D. (1995). Problems encountered in the practical implementation of geographical information systems (GIS) in veterinary epidemiology. (In Proceedings of the Society of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine Meeting. Reading, United Kingdom, p. 162).
Pech, R. & Hone, J. (1988). A model of the velocity of advance of foot and mouth disease in feral pigs. Journal of Applied Ecology, 25, 63–77.
Pinto, A.A. (2004). Foot and mouth disease in tropical wildlife. Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 1026, 65–72.
Porter, M.B., Long, M.T., Getman, L.M., Giguere, S., MacKay, R.J., Lester, G.D., Alleman, A.R., Wamsley, H.L., Franklin, R.P., Jacks, S., Buergelt, C.D. & Detrisac, C.J. (2003). West Nile Virus encephalomyelitis in horses: 46 cases (2001). Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, 222, 1241–1247.
Rosenberger, J.K., Krauss, W.C. & Slemmons, R.D. (1974). Isolation of newcastle disease and type-A influenza viruses from migratory waterfowl in the Atlantic flyway. Avian Diseases, 18, 610–613.
Salazar, P., Traub-Dargatz, J.L., Morley, P.S., Wilmot, D.D., Steffen, D.J., Cunningham, W.E. & Salman, M.D. (2004). Outcome of equids with clinical signs of West Nile virus infection and factors associated with death. Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, 225, 267–274.
Schwabe, C.W. (1984). Veterinary medicine and human health (3rd ed.) (Baltimore, MD: Williams & Wilkins).
Stallnecht, D.E. & Shane, S.M. (1988). Host range of avian influenza virus in free-living birds. Veterinary Research Communications, 12, 125–141.
Sutmoller, P., Thomson, G., Hargreaves, S., Foggin, C.M. & Anderson, E.C. (2000). The foot and mouth disease risk posed by African buffalo within wildlife conservancies to the cattle industry in Zimbabwe. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 44, 43–60.
Thomson, M.C., Connor, S.J., D’Alessandro, U., Rowlingson, B., Diggle, P., Cresswell, M. & Greenwood, B. (1999). Predicting malaria infection in Gambian children from satellite data and bed net use surveys: The importance of spatial correlation in the interpretation of results. American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 61, 2–8.
Torrens, P.M. & Benenson, I. (2005). Geographic automata systems. International Journal of Geographic Information Science, 19, 385–412.
Vazquez-Prokopec, G.M., Cecere, M.C., Canale, D.M., Gurtler, R.E. & Kitron, U. (2005). Spatiotemporal patterns of reinfestation by Triatoma guasayana (Hemiptera: Reduviidae) in a rural community of northwestern Argentina. Journal of Medical Entomology, 42, 571–581.
Ward, M.P. (2002a). Seasonality of canine leptospirosis in the United States and Canada and its association with rainfall. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 56, 203–213.
Ward, M.P. (2002b). Clustering of leptospirosis among dogs in the United States and Canada. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 56, 215–226.
Ward, M.P. & Carpenter, T.E. (2000). Techniques for analysis of disease clustering in space and in time in veterinary epidemiology. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 45, 257–284.
Ward, M.P. & Rollo, S. (2007). County-level risk assessment of avian influenza introduction and spread. Proceedings of the 62nd International Conference on Diseases in Nature Communicable to Man, Madison WI, 12–14 August. Abstract #14.
Ward, M.P., Glickman, L.T.G. & Guptill, L. (2002). Prevalence of and risk factors for leptospirosis among dogs in the United States and Canada: 677 cases (1970–1998). Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, 220, 53–58.
Ward, M.P., Levy, M., Thacker, H.L., Ash, M., Norman, S.K.L., Moore, G.E. & Webb, P.W. (2004a). An outbreak of West Nile Virus encephalomyelitis in a population of Indiana horses: 136 cases. Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, 225, 84–89.
Ward, M.P., Guptill, L.F., Prahl, A. & Wu, C.C. (2004b). Serovar-specific prevalence and risk factors for leptospirosis among dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association, 224, 1958–1963.
Ward, M.P., Guptill, L.F. & Wu, C.C. (2004c). Geographical risk factors for leptospirosis among Indiana dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 225, 72–77.
Ward, M.P., Schuermann, J.A., Highfield, L. & Murray, K.O. (2006). An outbreak of West Nile virus encephalomyelitis in Texas equids: 1, 698 cases. Veterinary Microbiology, 118, 255–259.
Ward, M.P., Laffan, S.W. & Highfield, L.D. (2007). The potential role of wild- and feral-animals as reservoirs of foot-and-mouth disease. Preventive Veterinary Medicine, 80, 9–23.
Webster, R.G., Bean, W.J., Gorman, O.T., Chambers, T.M. & Kawaoka, Y (1992). Evolution and ecology of influenza A viruses. Microbiological Reviews, 56, 152–179.
World Health Organization. (2007). Update: WHO-confirmed human cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) infection, 25 November 2003–24 November 2006. Weekly Epidemiological Record, 82, 41–48.
Woebser, G.A. (1997). Avian influenza, Newcastle disease, and other paramyxoviruses in diseases of wild waterfowl. (New York: Plenum).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media B.V
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ward, M. (2008). Spatial Epidemiology: Where Have We Come in 150 Years?. In: Sui, D.Z. (eds) Geospatial Technologies and Homeland Security. The GeoJournal Library, vol 94. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8507-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8507-9_13
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8339-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8507-9
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)