Winter Is Coming: A Socio-Environmental Monitoring and Spatiotemporal Modelling Approach for Better Understanding a Respiratory Disease

Type of content
Journal Article
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2018
Authors
Marek, Lukas
Campbell, Malcolm
Epton, Michael
Kingham, S.
Storer, M.
Abstract

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is a progressive lung disease affecting the respiratory function of every sixth New Zealander and over 300 million people worldwide. In this paper, we explored how the combination of social, demographical and environmental conditions (represented by increased winter air pollution) affected hospital admissions due to COPD in an urban area of Christchurch (NZ).We juxtaposed the hospitalisation data with dynamic air pollution data and census data to investigate the spatiotemporal patterns of hospital admissions. Spatial analysis identified high-risk health hot spots both overall and season specific, exhibiting higher rates in winter months not solely due to air pollution, but rather as a result of its combination with other factors that initiate deterioration of breathing, increasing impairments and lead to the hospitalisation of COPD patients. From this we found that socioeconomic deprivation and air pollution, followed by the age and ethnicity structure contribute the most to the increased winter hospital admissions. This research shows the continued importance of including both individual (composition) and area level (composition) factors when examining and analysing disease patterns.

Description
Citation
Marek L, Campbell M, Epton M, Kingham S, Storer M (2018). Winter Is Coming: A Socio-Environmental Monitoring and Spatiotemporal Modelling Approach for Better Understanding a Respiratory Disease. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. 7(11).
Keywords
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), winter, air pollution, deprivation, spatiotemporal pattern, clustering, Geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR)
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
0406 Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience
0909 Geomatic Engineering
Fields of Research::40 - Engineering::4013 - Geomatic engineering::401302 - Geospatial information systems and geospatial data modelling
Fields of Research::42 - Health sciences::4203 - Health services and systems::420308 - Health informatics and information systems
Rights
All rights reserved unless otherwise stated