Handbook of Spatial Epidemiology explains how to model epidemiological problems and improve inference about disease etiology from a geographical perspective. Top epidemiologists, geographers, and statisticians share interdisciplinary viewpoints on analyzing spatial data and space-time variations in disease incidences. These analyses can provide important information that leads to better decision making in public health. The first part of the book addresses general issues related to epidemiology, GIS, environmental studies, clustering, and ecological analysis. The second part presents basic statistical methods used in spatial epidemiology, including fundamental likelihood principles, Bayesian methods, and testing and nonparametric approaches. With a focus on special methods, the third part describes geostatistical models, splines, quantile regression, focused clustering, mixtures, multivariate methods, and much more. The final part examines special problems and application areas, such as residential history analysis, segregation, health services research, health surveys, infectious disease, veterinary topics, and health surveillance and clustering. Spatial epidemiology, also known as disease mapping, studies the geographical or spatial distribution of health outcomes. This handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of state-of-the-art approaches to determine the relationships between health and various risk factors, empowering researchers and policy makers to tackle public health problems.

Modelling Spatial and Spatial-Temporal Data: A Bayesian Approach is aimed at statisticians and quantitative social, economic and public health students and researchers who work with small-area spatial and spatial-temporal data. It assumes a grounding in statistical theory up to the standard linear regression model. The book compares both hierarchical and spatial econometric modelling, providing both a reference and a teaching text with exercises in each chapter. The book provides a fully Bayesian, self-contained, treatment of the underlying statistical theory, with chapters dedicated to substantive applications. The book includes WinBUGS code and R code and all datasets are available online. Part I covers fundamental issues arising when modelling spatial and spatial-temporal data. Part II focuses on modelling cross-sectional spatial data and begins by describing exploratory methods that help guide the modelling process. There are then two theoretical chapters on Bayesian models and a chapter of applications. Two chapters follow on spatial econometric modelling, one describing different models, the other substantive applications. Part III discusses modelling spatial-temporal data, first introducing models for time series data. Exploratory methods for detecting different types of space-time interaction are presented, followed by two chapters on the theory of space-time separable (without space-time interaction) and inseparable (with space-time interaction) models. An applications chapter includes: the evaluation of a policy intervention; analysing the temporal dynamics of crime hotspots; chronic disease surveillance; and testing for evidence of spatial spillovers in the spread of an infectious disease. A final chapter suggests some future directions and challenges. Robert Haining is Emeritus Professor in Human Geography, University of Cambridge, England. He is the author of Spatial Data Analysis in the Social and Environmental Sciences (1990) and Spatial Data Analysis: Theory and Practice (2003). He is a Fellow of the RGS-IBG and of the Academy of Social Sciences. Guangquan Li is Senior Lecturer in Statistics in the Department of Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering, Northumbria University, Newcastle, England. His research includes the development and application of Bayesian methods in the social and health sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

Handbook of Spatial Epidemiology explains how to model epidemiological problems and improve inference about disease etiology from a geographical perspective. Top epidemiologists, geographers, and statisticians share interdisciplinary viewpoints on analyzing spatial data and space-time variations in disease incidences. These analyses can provide important information that leads to better decision making in public health. The first part of the book addresses general issues related to epidemiology, GIS, environmental studies, clustering, and ecological analysis. The second part presents basic statistical methods used in spatial epidemiology, including fundamental likelihood principles, Bayesian methods, and testing and nonparametric approaches. With a focus on special methods, the third part describes geostatistical models, splines, quantile regression, focused clustering, mixtures, multivariate methods, and much more. The final part examines special problems and application areas, such as residential history analysis, segregation, health services research, health surveys, infectious disease, veterinary topics, and health surveillance and clustering. Spatial epidemiology, also known as disease mapping, studies the geographical or spatial distribution of health outcomes. This handbook offers a wide-ranging overview of state-of-the-art approaches to determine the relationships between health and various risk factors, empowering researchers and policy makers to tackle public health problems.

In recent years there has been a growing concern for the development of both efficient and effective ways to handle space-time problems. Such developments should be theoretically as well as empirically oriented. Regardless of which of these two arenas one enters. the impression is quickly gained that contemporary wO, rk on dynamic and evolutionary models has not proved to be as illuminating and rewarding as first anticipated. Historically speaking. the single. most important lesson this avenue of research has provided. is that linear models are woefully inadequate when dominant non-linear trends and relationships prevail. and that independent activities and actions are all but non-existent in the real-world. Meanwhile. one prominent imp 1 ication stemming from this 1 iterature is that the easiest modelling tasks are those of specifying good dynamic space-time models. Somewhat more problematic are the statistical questions of model specification. parameter estimation. and model validation. whereas even more problematic is the operationalization of evolutionary conceptual models. A timely next step in spatial analysis would seem to be a return to basics. with a pronounced focus both on specific problems (and data) and on the mechanisms that transform phenomena through space and/or time'. It appears that these transformation mechanisms must embrace both non-linear and autoregressive formalisms. Given. also. the variety of geographic forms. they must allow for bifurcation points to emerge. too.

Offers a practical introduction to regression modeling with spatial and spatial-temporal data relevant to research and teaching in the social and economic sciences Focuses on a few key datasets and data analysis using the open source software WinBUGS, R, and GeoDa Provides data and programming codes to allow users to undertake their own analyses Ends each chapter with a set of short exercises and questions for further study