Geographic Visualization to Support Epidemiology in Bulgaria

Anthony C. Robinson

GeoVISTA CenterDepartment of Geography

The Pennsylvania State University

Outline

• Motivation

• Introduction to Geographic Visualization

• The ESTAT Toolkit

• Using ESTAT to explore health in Bulgaria

• Future Directions

Motivation

• Health outcomes are closely tied to place and time

• Epidemiology requires tools to help explore massive digital databases

• Geographic Visualization is a new way to deal with these constraints

• Geo-Visualization can help with analysis of health issues in Bulgaria

Geographic Visualization

Common GIS– Static maps and graphics– Designed for prescribed

analysis– Provides a single view

Geo-Visualization– Interactive maps and

graphics– Designed for data

exploration– Multiple, coordinated views

Geo-Visualization at Penn State

• GeoVISTA – Geographic Visualization Science, Technology and Applications Center

• GeoVISTA Center creates new Geo-Viz tools for a wide range of application contexts:

– Spatial Epidemiology– Emergency Management– Intelligence Analysis– Climate Change

ESTAT• The Exploratory Spatio-Temporal Analysis Toolkit

Scatterplot

Parallel Coordinate PlotChoropleth Map

Time Series Graph

ESTAT• Designed with support from the USA National

Cancer Institute (NCI)

• Developed by software engineers at GeoVISTA

• I worked with Epidemiologists at NCI from 2003-05 to design and evaluate ESTAT

• Focused on visualizing cancer incidence, mortality, and socio-economic indicators

Application of ESTAT in USA

• We have worked closely with health analysts to explore spatial patterns

• ESTAT is intended to help users create new hypotheses or modify those that already exist

• One particularly odd pattern has emerged:

– Lung Cancer Mortality & Annual Precipitation

Exploring Health in Bulgaria

• Data from BG National Center for Health Informatics, Data Presentation System

• Data from BG National Statistical Institute 2001

Census results

• 472 variables for 28 Oblasts

– Incidence/Mortality time series (1996 – 2004)– Health care indicators– Population and social covariates

Exploring Health in Bulgaria

ESTAT Demonstration

ESTAT Technical Details

• Data requirements: ESRI Shapefile with corresponding databases (in .dbf or .csv formats)

• Computer requirements: 512 m. of RAM, installation of the Java environment

• Most computers built within the past 5 years will run ESTAT with little trouble

Open-Source Tools

• ESTAT and all of the tools we build at GeoVISTA are Open Source

• This means that the programs are open to all uses and that the source code is free to anyone who wishes to extend it

• In short – ESTAT is free for you to use and modify as you wish!

Future Development

• We are currently working to implement spatial statistic methods into ESTAT

• ESTAT will be extended with a tool designed to detect clusters among variables

• Soon you will be able to save and share your exploration with others

What We Can Do

• Collaborate to explore and analyze relevant health issues in Bulgaria

• Let us put your data into ESTAT!

• We can also work together to design a custom version of ESTAT for Bulgaria

Мерси!

This presentation and ESTAT with Bulgaria Data:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/acr181/bulgaria.html

For more about the GeoVISTA Center:

http://www.geovista.psu.edu/

For academic papers see:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/acr181/portfolio.html