GIS for emergency preparedness and health risk reduction : [proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on GIS for Energency Preparedness and Health Risk Reduction, Budapest, Hungary, 22-25 April 2001

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have developed rapidly in recent years and now provide powerful tools for the capture, manipulation, integration, interrogation, modelling, analysis and visualisation of data - tools that are already used for policy support in a wide range of areas at almost all geographic and administrative levels. This holds especially for emergency preparedness and health risk reduction, which are all essentially spatial problems. To date, however, many initiatives have remained disconnected and uncoordinated, leading to less powerful, less compatible and less widely implemented systems than might otherwise have been the case. The important matters discussed here include the probabilistic nature of most environmental hazards and the semi-random factors that influence interactions between these and human exposures; the effects of temporal and spatial scales on hazard assessment and imputed risk; the effects of measurement error in risk estimation and the stratification of risks and their impacts according to socioeconomic characteristics; and the quantification of socioeconomic differences in vulnerability and susceptibility to environmental hazards. Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Preparing for Environmental Health Emergencies: The Role of GIS....Pages 3-34 Timelines, Environments and Issues of Risk in Health: The Practical Algebra of (x,y,t,a)....Pages 35-60 Social Models of Disaster: Vulnerability and Empowerment....Pages 61-76 Uncertainty in the Application of GIS for Predictive Health Risk Assessment for a Radioactive Waste Repository in Slovenia....Pages 77-97 Front Matter....Pages 99-99 Evaluation of Volcanic Fallout Impact from Vesuvius Using GIS....Pages 101-114 Volcanic Risk Assesment and Spatial Planning Policies in the Island of Hawai’i....Pages 115-135 The Risk Assessment of Hazardous Materials Transportation Using GIS....Pages 137-155 A GIS-Aided Frequency Planning Tool for Terrestrial Broadcasting and Land Mobile Services....Pages 157-171 Progress Towards Harmonised European Industrial Risk Management Information Systems....Pages 173-191 Application of the Seveso II Directive in Slovenia with the Support of GIS....Pages 193-203 Front Matter....Pages 205-205 A European Health and Environment Information System for Exposure and Disease Mapping and Risk Assessment (EUROHEIS)....Pages 207-225 Address Geocoding for Small Area Environmental Health Studies in Denmark....Pages 227-240 Health Characteristics of the Stockholm Population — Disease Mapping Using a Computerised System....Pages 241-253 Small Area Statistics on Health (SMASH): A System for Rapid Investigations of Cancer in Finland....Pages 255-266 Geographical Distribution of Cardiovascular Mortality in Comunidad Valenciana (Spain)....Pages 267-282 Application of GIS for Assessing the Risk of Water-Borne Diseases in the Samarkand Province....Pages 283-292 Geographical Aspects of Mortality and Morbidity Data in Hungary: A GIS Analysis....Pages 293-316 Back Matter....Pages 317-326 Seventeen papers from the April 2001 NATO conference in Budapest discuss basic principles of emergency preparedness, such as timeliness, vulnerability, and uncertainty, as well as applications of GIS in the areas of emergency preparedness and health risk reduction. Specific chapters address topics as varied as volcanic fallout, hazmat transport, industrial risk management information systems, disease mapping, address geocoding, and water-borne diseases. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)