Each tutorial contains step-by-step exercises and corresponding screen captures as well as user dialog boxes and resulting outputs. The steps follow workflows that you can use in a variety of projects. “Your Turn” exercises interspersed throughout the tutorials are designed to reinforce the lessons you learn. These exercises can help you internalize ArcGIS steps and workflows.
• Each chapter ends with hands-on assignments that require independent thinking to apply the knowledge and skills gained from the tutorials. By working through these assignments, you will make ArcGIS part of your routine and a reliable tool for analysis of health care and other issues.
The target audience for the book includes health management students and practitioners, computer specialists who want to work in the health field, and health-care managers and researchers who want to gain proficiency in GIS. This book serves primarily as a computer-lab textbook, but it can also be used for self-study. The beginning chapters of GIS Tutorial for Health can be used for short, two- to three-day courses.
If you are new to ArcGIS for Desktop and are using the book as a self-study guide, we recommend you work through the chapters in sequence. However, because the chapters are largely independent of each other, you can use them in the order that best fits your needs.
Data for the book is available to download on the Esri Press “Book Resources” webpage, esripress.esri.com/bookresources. Click the appropriate book title, and then click the data link under “Resources” to download the exercise data. A 60-day trial of ArcGIS for Desktop software and extensions is available for readers at esri.com/trydesktop. You will need the exercise data and access to ArcGIS 10.2 for Desktop to perform the exercises in this book. Access to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and an Internet connection are also necessary for some tutorials.
For more information about this book, including how to obtain instructor resources, please go to esri.com/esripress.
After teaching GIS for over 20 years, we know that you — like our own students — will enjoy this subject and software. Go to it!
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all who made this book possible.
GIS Tutorial for Health was used by students at Carnegie Mellon University before it went to Esri Press for publication. The students and teaching assistants who used the book provided us with significant feedback. Their thoughtful comments guided our revisions and helped improve the content and overall quality of this book.
We are very grateful to the many individuals, organizations, and vendors who have generously supplied us with interesting GIS cases and data. These include Dr. Bruce Dixon, Gerald Barron, Jo Ann Glad, Dr. LuAnn Brink, Glenda Christy, Dan Cinpinski, Mike Diskin, Bruce Good, Dave Namey, and Thom Stulginski of the Allegheny County Health Department; Ross Capaccio of röös design + consulting, and Thom D. Freyer, CAE of the American College of Healthcare Executives, for the datasets used in the Partners for Success chapter deployment project; Carl Kinkade of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); Noel S. Zuckerbraun, MD, MPH, assistant professor of pediatrics, Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Barbara A. Gaines, MD, director, Benedum Trauma Program, assistant professor of surgery, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine; Noor Ismail, Mike Homa, and Lena Andrews of the City of Pittsburgh, Department of City Planning; the Trustees of Dartmouth College, the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care; Linda Williams Pickle, PhD, and David Stinchcomb of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Mortality Maps website; Chris Chalmers, GIS coordinator, Nebraska Health and Human Services, Bioterrorism Response Section director for GIS Public Health Research, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, CALMIT; Maurie Kelly of Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access (PASDA); Clara Burgert and Blake Zachary, IFC Marco, funding provided by US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the MEASURE DHS project; Nathan Heard, US Department of State; US Geological Survey and US Census Bureau; and Tele Atlas for use of its USA datasets contained within the Esri Data & Maps 2004 Media Kit.
Finally, thanks to the entire team at Esri and Esri Press.
Part 1
GIS benefits and map basics
Chapter 1
Introducing GIS and health applications
Objectives
• Define GIS
• Define spatial data for graphic and image map layers
• Review the national infrastructure for spatial data
• Review the unique capabilities of GIS
• Demonstrate how GIS can be used for health applications
• Introduce ArcGIS and its user interface
• Introduce online GIS tools
Geographic information systems (GIS) is a technology that has unique and valuable applications for policy makers, planners, and managers in many fields, including public health and health care. GIS health applications include an academic organization’s use of GIS for medical research, a hospital or managed-care organization’s improved delivery of health-care services, and a public health department’s use of mapping and spatial statistics for disease surveillance and analysis. GIS software and applications allow visualization and processing of data in ways that were not possible in the past. The purpose of this book is to provide hands-on experience with the use of ArcGIS for Desktop software in the context of health applications. You need no previous experience using GIS.
This chapter describes GIS and its inputs and special capabilities and follows with a discussion of health issues and GIS applications. We also preview the upcoming tutorials in this book, and then use short tutorials in this chapter to introduce you to the use of ArcGIS software.
What is GIS?
GIS is computer technology that engages geographers, computer scientists, social scientists, planners, engineers, and others in spatially analyzing issues. Consequently, it has been defined from several different perspectives (see Clarke 2003). We prefer a definition that emphasizes GIS as an information system: GIS is a system for input, storage, processing, and retrieval of spatial data. Except for the additional word “spatial,” this is a standard definition of an information system. Spatial components include a digital map infrastructure, GIS software with unique functionality that focuses on location, and new mapping applications for organizations of all kinds. Definitions of these distinctive aspects of GIS follow.
Spatial data
Spatial data includes the locations and shapes of geographic features, in the form of either vector or raster data. Vector maps have features drawn using points, lines, and polygons to represent discrete geographic objects such as automobile accident locations, streets, and counties. (A polygon is a closed area that has a boundary consisting of connected straight lines.) Raster maps are generally aerial photographs, satellite images, or representations of surfaces such as elevation, which are used to represent continuous geographies.
For example, figure 1.1 is a vector map that has three
