ESM Research

 I was raised as a Navy “Junior”, moving every 18m-2 years, as the “needs of the Navy” dictated. Now I’m so settled in Richmond (8 years and counting!) I can’t even imagine having to move. Except blog-wise! This blog is moving to a new address: http://esmresearch.org. Catchy, huh? Check us out there - all the old posts, in a spiffy new interface that will hopefully be more visible to the world outside the wall of the Boatwright Library here at the University of Richmond.

Doing a search for a student recently, I came across this open-access, peer-reviewed journal, the International Journal of Health Geographics. (Read the “About” page for the journal here.)

The range of article topics is vast and fascinating - for example:

“Tracking the polio virus down the Congo River: a case study on the use of Google Earth (TM) in public health planning and mapping.” 

Raoul Kamadjeu

International Journal of Health Geographics 2009, 8:4doi:10.1186/1476-072X-8-4

Published:	22 January 2009

Abstract (provisional)

Background

The use of GIS in public health is growing, a consequence of a rapidly evolving technology and increasing accessibility to a wider audience. Google EarthTM (GE) is becoming an important mapping infrastructure for public health. However, generating traditional public health maps for GE is still beyond the reach of most public health professionals. In this paper, we explain, through the example of polio eradication activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, how we used GE Earth as a planning tool and we share the methods used to generate public health maps.

Results

The use of GE improved field operations and resulted in better dispatch of vaccination teams and allocation of resources. It also allowed the creation of maps of high quality for advocacy, training and to help understand the spatiotemporal relationship between all the entities involved in the polio outbreak and response.

Conclusions

GE has the potential of making mapping available to a new set of public health users in developing countries. High quality and free satellite imagery, rich features including Keyhole Markup Language or image overlay provide a flexible but yet powerful platform that set it apart from traditional GIS tools and this power is still to be fully harnessed by public health professionals.

Pandemic flu hasn’t made the news much this winter (although the stock market seems to have caught a bad case of something), but the CDC has collected everything you might ever be interested in on the topic, and put it together here.

(Image courtesy of Fish & Wildlife Service)

Want to know how many human cases of Avian Flu have been reported this year? 12 cases, 4 deaths as of 11 Feb. Can you define Avian Flu, and describe how it differs from seasonal and pandemic flu? You’ll find the answer here. Need planning checklists? Check. In addition to tremendous amounts of scientific information (links to research activities are here), there is a huge amount of information on the epidemic influenza outbreak of 1918, including a “storybook“with personal narratives (including some video) and a link to the Department of Health and Human Services’ web history entitled The Great Pandemic: The United States in 1918-1919.

Thought some of you might be interested in this:

VEM Conference offers national and local perspectives
The 2009 Virginia Emergency Management Conference, set for March 31-April 3 in Hampton, will provide professional development, skills and knowledge of current emergency management techniques, and best practices. This year’s agenda is one of the strongest programs since the conference started more than 10 years ago. Attendees will hear from:

• National and state media representatives on coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy
• National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read on 2008’s hurricane season, the most damaging season since Katrina
• Emergency managers from northern Virginia on coordinating the most complex Presidential Inauguration ever
• A young woman who survived the 1999 Columbine High School shooting with her inspiring story

The robust agenda offers much more, including speakers from Texas and Louisiana who’ll describe response to Hurricane Ike in light of lessons learned from Katrina and Rita, as well as emergency managers from Virginia who responded to the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy.

 

Online registration and brochure are available at http://www.vemaweb.org. Special rates end March 1 for hotel accommodations at the Embassy Suites Hampton.

Every hour yesterday, it seemed, the top of the hour news brought an increase in the number of deaths caused by these fires; right now the count is 181, and is expected to climb.

The image above is courtesy of NASA’s Earth Observatory, which has an informative page on the Bushfires in Southeast Australia. Google News for this topic can be found here, and the local news services are hugely informative. That’s how I found this: The Centre for Risk and Community Safety, at RMIT University in Melbourne.

About Us

The Centre for Risk and Community Safety was established in January 2001 and is a collaborative project by Geospatial Science (RMIT University), Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies (CRES) (Australian National University), and Emergency Management Australia.

The collaborative group combines internationally recognised research, research management and training expertise with the peak emergency management body in Australia. These partnerships help ensure that the Centre serves the sector’s strategic research needs.

Aims

• To identify the strategic research needs of emergency management;
• To publicise these needs, undertake research to satisfy them, and to encourage others to contribute to the research effort; and
• To help develop the next generation of researchers in the field - through recruiting and training.

Their Research Agenda is intriguing and wide-ranging. Undoubtedly, this latest event (or series of events) will yield much fruit for study.

I have a six-year old son who is more than interested in any type of weather event - we use the term “obsessed”, and we don’t use it lightly. Second only to tornadoes in his world are volcanoes, and he is begging us to take him to Hawaii so he can see real lava flow.

As much as we would love to take him to Hawaii, that’s not a cheap trip, so in the meantime I’ve discovered the USGS “Alaska Volcano Observatory” website, with live webcams aimed at the major volcanoes in Alaska. In addition to the beautiful imagery (both still and video), the site is packed with research, information, and even hazards summaries. (Be sure to check the sunrise indicator on the webcam video - although it’s mid-morning here in Virginia, the sun won’t be up at the Redoubt volcano until 9:30 AKST. Which is just about the time our budding weatherman gets home from school…)

How’s that for a catchy title? The New Scientist magazine links to several different maps which look at the areas of the United States where residents are most likely to die from a natural disaster.

The most interesting thing about these maps, to me and others who have looked at them, is that severe heat kills more people than any other natural disaster cause, and it’s closely followed by winter weather. (Which means it’s not the headliners like hurricanes that are likely to get you, but the day-to-day things, and not being wise during those times of severe weather. Stepping off my soapbox now.) It’s also interesting that the data is broken down by county, which means studies can be done on why mortality rates can differ so significantly across a non-physical map line. (cf. the Chicago Heat Wave post I did last week.)

These maps are based on this article, “Spatial patterns of natural hazards mortality in the United States,” published in the open-access International Journal of Health Geographics, by two researchers from the University of South Carolina’s Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute.

With the change of administrations in Washington, it seems like a good time to do some evaluation. This report, released this month, gives an assessment of the operating plans the 50 states (as well as DC and the five U.S. Territories) have put into place in case of pandemic influenza.

While the report breaks out how each state rates in every different assessed area, there are some caveats:

The results of this assessment process provide a broad-brush picture of comparative strengths and weaknesses across the various facets of pandemic preparedness. However, readers should be mindful of two caveats. First, the findings are the product of reviews of documents rather than site visits or other direct observations of performance. The actual degree of readiness for any given State and any given Operating Objective therefore may be better or worse than what the submitted documents portray. Second, preparedness is dynamic rather than static. The actual degree of readiness therefore may have improved or deteriorated between the time any given State submitted its planning information and now.

Makes you thankful that this year has been a “Moderate” one for flu across most of the country. (See the post about Google Flu Trends for an interesting comparison of this year to past ones.) Wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands!

I recently read this report, the first annual report on 9/11 Health, released by the World Trade Center Medical Working Group. It examines the overall effects of the 9/11 attacks on residents, responders and others. The report was part of the output of a New York city initiative called 9-11 Health.

“While the full scope of 9/11-related problems is unknown, a growing body of evidence suggests that significant health conditions have emerged that are associated with the disaster, in particular for those exposed during the collapse of the towers and those who participated substantially in rescue, recovery, and clean-up operations.This website has been developed to provide the latest scientific information to the public about 9/11-related health problems and to serve as a resource for people who have been affected.”

The website breaks down resources for individuals (”Responders”, “Children”, “Residents”), includes a complete report by the NYC health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, and links to the WTC Health Registry. The website provides a “News & Events” link, which may be the easiest way to view the wide range of studies done on the subject. Everything from headaches among registrees (an ongoing study) to the impact on behavior in preschool children from exposure to trauma such as the World Trade Center attacks are listed in the “Health Studies & Research” link. Altogether, the website has or links to any information you could want on the physical and mental health impacts of the terror attacks of Sept. 11th.

(At least, that’s what 45f feels like when it’s been below freezing for a long, long time!)

One of my guilty pleasures in life is watching the Weather Channel, especially their “When Weather Changed History” series. Last night’s episode was about the 1995 Chicago heat wave that killed an estimated 739 people. I was particularly interested in the focus on the public policy aspects of the disaster - what officials had done to prepare, what lessons they learned from it, etc. When Europe experienced an even longer heat episode several years later, French officials turned to Chicago for help. A number of articles have been published about this event; I am going to look for the study mentioned in the show, which compared two adjacent neighborhoods. One neighborhood had a much higher death rate than the other, and the study’s authors probed why. For assistance in finding other research relating to this event, email me.

An interview with Eric Klinenberg, the author of the book that details the history of the event, can be found here.