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Modeling Disease and
Modeling Disease and

Behavior Using GIS
Behavior Using GIS

By Eva Reid

Any geographer or geospatial professional knows that “It’s of disease outbreak. These tools are a main source of obtaining
more than just a map.” Dr. Este Geraghty, chief medical officer and analyzing information for determining the type and
and health solutions director at ESRI, said the same in our intensity of disease intervention. GIS-supported modelling
conversation recently about GIS, public health, and a new is also immensely helpful, providing place-based “what-if”
agent-based model developed by Epistemix, called FRED. scenarios to explain disease spread and helping to prioritize
how and where vaccines are distributed.
The geographic scientific community has understood that
space, place, and health are related for at least 160 years. Some One of the challenges with including GIS modelling in
would argue that it’s been much longer than that and goes managing a pandemic is that some epidemiologists don’t
back to ancient Greece. Regardless, the relationship between touch GIS every day. GIS capacity in local health departments
place and health has led to many innovations in health care is generally “moderate to low,” according to Dr. Geraghty. Not
and health research. GIS is an effective tool to understand this for lack of interest, says Dr. Geraghty, but GIS often ends up
relationship, and to support decision-making in public health. in an IT group within the health department (or in another

GIS has been used in modern public health research for over agency completely) and GIS is “not IT, it’s informatics.”
20 years to map patterns of resources and disease, but also to Another challenge often mentioned in healthcare research
monitor, assess, and predict health outcomes — everything is the limitation of available population data. Health
from keeping tabs on outbreaks of disease to assessing potential planning models may have to rely on data that have quality
infections and disease risks and predict sudden emergencies. As or completeness issues, or have to be aggregated in order to
technology has advanced, so has the opportunity for improved provide individual privacy. Census data, for example, are
public health surveillance, understanding virus transmission, collected at the individual level but aggregated into various
and distribution of protective equipment and medication. geographies. These data are used in a variety of ways,
including identifying populations of need, where to support
GIS and epidemiology infrastructure investment, where to promote public programs,

GIS was used extensively to understand recent H1N1 and Ebola and how to encourage investment in specific areas. As good
outbreaks, and has been used to track other communicable and useful as they are, there are some difficulties with aggregate
diseases, including Zika, West Nile virus, and measles. Much data and making decisions about human beings using these
emphasis is placed on understanding the spatial distribution data. These include:
of the disease epidemiology and answering questions like: • Aggregated data provide privacy but don’t allow for

• How quickly is the virus spreading and where is it going? understanding individual situations.
• How quickly are local and regional hospital resources • All variables are not always available at all aggregation levels.
being depleted?
• Data are relatively static; some variables may be as old as the
• What medications are available? Where are they? last population enumeration.

Statistical models and simulations are important tools in the • Finding environmental risk data is difficult.
epidemiologist’s toolkit to predict the possibility and severity

18 EMPIRE STATE SURVEYOR / VOL. 57 • NO 1 / 2021 • JANUARY/FEBRUARY