Mapping Maine’s Cancer Situation

Brewer-based Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health and James W. Sewall Co. in Old Town are tackling the question of why the state’s cancer rates are higher than the U.S. average and if the causes are more environmental or genetic. The “BioGeoBank of Maine” project includes a tissue bank (sample’s of human tissue from around the state) and mapping of many toxins. Once built the project will offer a “limited-access computer gateway, researchers will be able to explore correlation between disease and the environment at a given moment in time and over a span of years, adding and subtracting layers of information to refine and expand the associations.”

- Bangor Daily News

Local GIS Tidbits

The British Columbia city of Nanaimo has built nearly 20 SketchUp models of buildings in its downtown to send to Google for approval and integration into Google Earth. City employees and members of the community are doing the modeling using “Sketchup Pro and Google Pro, along with a photo of a particular building’s facade.”

- Nanaimo Bulletin

Washington DC has updated its sex offender registry and mapping app to include the ability for residents to search the database based on addresses. Until now, that is, since 2001, users could only search by the cryptic Police Service Area (PSA). There are 45 of those in the district and citizens don’t generally know in which one they live. Now visitors can find offenders who live or work within a 1/4 or 1/2 mile radius of an address. Many comments on the site on the matter pushed the Police Dept to update the app (built on Google Maps) with the new functionality.

- Washington Post

The Alcohol and Substance Abuse Council of Jefferson County Inc. (New York) aims “to gather community agencies and organizations to get them on board with using geographic information system mapping to examine the density of alcohol outlets in the north country and compare that data with various social, criminal and health-related trends.” I guess there’s no licensing of these outlets or perhaps they are looking for illegal ones. For now there’s no GIS and the group is just looking for local support to follow the lead of a graduate project of Robert S. Pezzolesi which shows that focused interventions on the alcohol environment can help other social ills.

- Watertown Daily Times

Japanese Govt Funding “Infection Tracking” via Cell Experiment

The idea is see how/if cell phones that track location can help track and respond to a “made up” illness and thus be valuable in a real situation. A subsidiary of Softbank Corp., a major Japanese Internet and cellular provider, proposed a system that uses phones to limit pandemics and hopes to be selected to test it in an elementary school. Students will carry cell phones and be tracked minute by minute. Several will be identified as “infected” and those they “interact with” may thus be infect too. Parents will be notified to bring the child to the doctor.

There are many issues related to privacy, participation, notification to be addressed, so testing out reactions in a “made up scenario” is a good way to identify them.

- AP

Using Maps to Get People Trained in CPR

The centerpiece of the American Heart Association’s campaign during National CPR & AED Awareness Week is a map. The idea is to document those who have been trained on the map and to reach the goal of 1 million trained.

While I’m all for CPR and training, does the map help? Are you likely to visit it to find out if there’s someone trained in CPR in your ZIP Code? State? Will knowing that encourage you to get trained? Will the map be valuable after the campaign?

From the PR: “The American Heart Association wants a million people to learn CPR as part of National CPR & AED Awareness Week, June 1-7, to help save cardiac arrest victims like Matt. The week encourages the public to get CPR training and learn how to use an AED. It also encourages them to log their training on the association’s Web site. The site will feature a live map that will update in real time when people submit their information.”

Is this an effective use of maps for “marketing?”

- map/website
- press release

CBS News References Google Map Mashup of H1N1 Map

“Authoritative source” is one term being thrown around quite a bit in media circles. CBSNews references a mashup from “Laurel” of confirmed and unconfirmed cases.

What we know about “Laurel”: “I’m a computer scientist interested in helping provide tools for real-time disease tracking.
If you have any questions, please email me at: swineflu09 [at] gmail [dot] com .”

What we know about the map: “This is a map depicting confirmed and suspected cases of the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, with contributors from all over the world, from a variety of backgrounds including health, journalism, technology.”

What we know about the “points”: They all seem to source news outlets.

I’m curious how/if CBSNews vetted mashup maps and selected this one over other user generated ones.