Geospatial Health Research Group

Projects

Reducing the Burden of Road Traffic-Associated Mortality using Mobile Technology (funded by National Institute of Health)

This project aims to reduce RTI-associated morbidity and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa using mobile technology. We use the existing location-aware mobile technologies embedded with Geo-SMS notifications, to accurately identify RTI locations in Lagos State, and develop spatiotemporal, interactive RTI maps to assist first responders with decision support to reduce RTI burden in Lagos State, Nigeria.


Roles of IoT-based personal monitoring for measuring the level of exposure to particulate matter of asthmatic children (funded by Korean Center for Disease Control)

This project aims to compare spatial and temporal patterns of the data from area monitoring and personal monitoring for particulate matter and their association with asthmatic symptoms of patients, which should discover the limitation of area monitoring and provide the guidance on how are monitoring data should be used for intervention when and where personal monitoring data is not available.


Urban Safety based on Sustainable Urban Metabolism (funded by National Research Foundation of Korea)

This project aims to develop the fundamental framework for evaluating urban safety using the concept of sustainable urban metabolism. This field of research has been motivated by a growing concern on safety and sustainability in large cities in Korea which has been threatened by a variety of urban dilemma such as crime, social and economic regional disparity, psychosocial isolation, natural and man-made accidents, pollution and environmental risks, disease outbreak, and all other by-products of overpopulation, overconsumption and rapid and excessive urbanization procedure. The framework to be developed in this project should provide a direction on redefining the concept of urban safety, determining the realm of urban safety, and enhancing the evaluation process of urban safety in city governments in Korea.


Geospatial Analysis of Injury Burden in Low and Middle Income Countries (funded by UT-Southwestern)

This project aims to reduce injury-related morbidity and mortality in low and middle income countries using mobile technology and spatial analytic modeling. The main objectives of this project include identifying injury locations accurately in a timely fashion and developing spatiotemporal and interactive injury maps to provide first responders with decision support to reduce injury burden in developing countries.


Effects of CCTV on Crime (funded by Korea Institute of Criminology)

This project aims to determine conditional effects of open-street CCTVs on crime across socially-constructed, socioeconomic and physical environmental factors and interactions. The conditional crime reduction effect of open-street CCTVs suggests some neighborhood characteristics optimize the deployment of CCTVs. The findings can be utilized for more effectively implementing the open-street CCTV mechanism for crime control and prevention.


Child immunization in Bangladesh (funded by an EPPS Advisory Council Award 2014)

This project aims to develop a multi-level spatial model to capture variability in the potential determinants of child immunization coverage in Bangladesh by applying a Bayesian Maximum Entropy modeling framework to the DHS (Demographic and Health Surveys) data. It produces theoretically robust and practically meaningful maps of predicted immunization coverage over the entire country by integrating all types of spatial information available in the interpolation process. Furthermore, a field-based evaluation in Bangladesh during April 2014 assessed the feasibility of this mapping technique as a decision-making tool for national and local immunization strategies.


Asthma in Seoul, Korea (funded by National Research Foundation of Korea)

This project aims to assess spatial dynamics of various physical, social, and behavioral risk factors for allergic diseases, and identify critical areas with elevated risks of allergic diseases using GIS-based spatial modeling techniques. In doing so, it can deliver such information more effectively to all relevant policymakers and citizens using the IT-based technology for more effective targeted intervention.


Malaria control in Africa (funded by National Institutes of Health)

This project aims to develop an “effective” and “practical” decision support tool to improve the implementation of malaria control strategies, including both vector control and disease management in Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda. In addition, we perform value-of-information (VOI) analyses to evaluate the tool and create an agenda for evidence-based malaria policy.


Food deserts and health disparity in East Asia (funded by Incheon National University)

This project aims to examine what factors contribute to limited access to healthy affordable foods among low-income families in East Asia. Whereas the traditional concept of food deserts in Western settings emphasizes supply-side factors, we take a look at demand-side factors that are potentially responsible for formation of areas equivalent to food deserts in East Asia by conducting factor analysis. Moreover, employment of GIS data will be able to reveal the shape of distribution of relevant health disparity among neighborhoods, which could provide useful insights to development of more specifically targeted nutrition-related public policy.


Effectiveness of mosquito nets for malaria control

Performing a comprehensive review of over 2,000 scholarly articles, this project aims to evaluate the overall effectiveness of long-lasting insecticidal nets and conventional insecticide-treated nets and to compare the effectiveness of these two types of mosquito nets to prevent malaria under diverse conditions using a meta-regression analysis. The findings would have practical implications for governments and NGOs, given the current funding gap they have been facing in order to achieve universal coverage with long-lasting insecticidal nets.