Geospatial Model Determines School Closures Had No Impact on Lessening H1N1 Flu Spread

Here’s the meaty bit from the geospatial perspective:

The study also found that identifying sick students individually and keeping them from attending school had minimal impact on an epidemic. In addition, there were no significant differences between individual school closures and system-wide closures in mitigating an epidemic.

The study was based on a computer simulation model of Allegheny County, Pa., that represented the county’s population, school systems, hospitals, workplaces, households and communities.

The model was developed to evaluate three school-focused strategies for dealing with H1N1 outbreaks: isolating sick children individually at home but leaving the school open, closing the entire school system and closing individual schools.

Simulations were based on the movement of residents each weekday from their households to designated workplaces or schools. To account for the lack of real information about individual’s movements, RTI’s Geospatial Spatial and Technology Group developed complex synthesized populations of 1.2 million people, including 200,000 school-aged children, more than 500,000 households and nearly 300 schools.

- press release

Mapping and Social Justice and OpenStreetMap in Nairobi Slums

Teens have mapped the Nairobi, Kenya slum of Kibera, the second largest African slum to Seweto in South Africa. Kibera is home to more than 1 million people. The project was organized with the help of several organizations including “the humanitarian OpenStreetMap team in collaboration with JumpStart International, and other partners including Jubal Harpster of WhereCampAfrica, the Social Development Network, Pamoja Trust, Hands on Kenya and Carolina for Kibera”

The article highlights such mapping as a step toward social justice:

Dr Siddharth Agarwal, executive director of the Delhi-based Urban Health Research Centre, says that rapid urbanisation and the growth of slum settlements poses a serious challenge to city planning. He says that in most of the world, including his native India, the majority of these areas remain. Spatial mapping, in his view, has not been used optimally for city planning to provide basic facilities such as health and sanitation.

- IPS

Crowdsourcing Pushes Ski Resorts to Report Snow Cover Accurately

NPR reported last night about paper from two Dartmouth professors that highlighted, among other things, that ski areas exaggerate snow levels, especially on the weekend. They compared reports from ski areas and government weather data.

An iPhone app for skiers and snowboarders designed to share real time information on snow conditions was released during the study. It basically has forced ski areas to be more accurate.. Once the app came out, those exaggerations dropped, most significantly in ski areas with good AT&T.

- All Things Considered

A GIS App to Locate Potential Ski Areas

Jordan Silberman and colleague Peter Rees from the University of Delaware in Newark published an article in the January edition of Applied Geography detailing the app. Once you input the general area of interest and the nature of the resort (small, large, etc.) the app seeks out those locations that are available and have the humidity levels most likely to produce powder snow. It considers accesibility, slope steepness and the risk of avalanches, among other things.

- New Scientist via IO9

Quote of the Week

“We’ve become a big-time county government in the past 10 years. A decade ago, we didn’t have an IT-GIS system, and now we have one that has won awards. We didn’t have a 911 system, and now we have an enhanced system and are in the process of partnering with Georgetown County so we’ll all be part of a single system. We used to have trouble locating people who called in emergencies, now we can locate people by their cell phones to within just a few yards. It’s like going from the 19th to the 21st century all at once.”

Horry County Council Chairwoman Liz Gilland in an article about changes in the Myrtle Beach, SC [corrected from NC, per comment on another post] area in the past 10 years in the Sun News