Lai P.C., Mak A.S. (Eds.) GIS for Health and the Environment: Development in the Asia-Pacific Region

Springer. 2007. - 317 p.
Many people are talking about the GIS and public and environmental health. The way we make public policies on health and environmental matters is changing, and there is little doubt that GIS provides powerful tools for visualizing and linking data in public health surveillance. This book is a result of the International Conference in GIS and Health held on 27-29 June 2006 in Hong Kong. The selected chapters are organized into four themes: GIS Informatics; Human and Environmental Factors; Disease modeling; and Public health, population health technologies, and surveillance. As evident from the chapters, the main problem in GIS-based epidemiological studies is the availability of reliable exposure data. There is also a huge problem of showing adequate responsibility and ability to meet public concerns, such as protection on privacy and quick response systems. There has been some works done in search of the right approach in bringing together and reconciling market and public interests. Talking to each other and sharing critical information are getting increasingly important. Much work remains to be done to improve the GIS-based epidemiologic methods into tools for fully developed analytical studies and, particularly, the need to identify standard interfaces and infrastructures for the global disease reporting system.