Day: July 13, 2009

Dr. K. Kasturirangan Receives ESRI’s “Making a Difference” Award

/ Matt Artz / 1 Comment

Today during the Plenary at the ESRI International User Conference in San Diego, California, ESRI President Jack Dangermond presented a “Making a Difference” Award to Dr. K. Kasturirangan, Member (Science), Planning Commission, Government of India, for his groundbreaking use of GIS for India’s space program.

“He makes a difference because of the integration of remote sensing into GIS and also the tremendous focus he’s created on applications,” says Dangermond.

As the former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization and a longtime user of GIS technology, Dr. Kasturirangan has been instrumental in shaping the spatial data framework for all of India. He’s also been the director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, since April 2004. In addition, he’s a recipient of the three civilian awards from the Government of India: the Padma Shri (1982), Padma Bhushan (1992), and Padma Vibhushan (2000).

Dr. Kasturirangan’s work helped with the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, India’s first unmanned scientific mission to the moon. Today, he holds the distinguished position of India’s parliament, Rajya Sabha. And he continues to play a leadership role in developing new application areas for GIS. These developments are shaping the future of GIS technology.

Spatial Analysis in Epidemiology

/ Matt Artz

51EveiROHHLby Mark Stevenson, Kim B. Stevens, David J. Rogers, and Archie C.A. Clements

This book provides a practical, comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the use of spatial statistics in epidemiology – the study of the incidence and distribution of diseases. Used appropriately, spatial analytical methods in conjunction with GIS and remotely sensed data can provide significant insights into the biological patterns and processes that underlie disease transmission. In turn, these can be used to understand and predict disease prevalence. This user-friendly text brings together the specialised and widely-dispersed literature on spatial analysis to make these methodological tools accessible to epidemiologists for the first time.With its focus is on application rather than theory, Spatial Analysis in Epidemiology includes a wide range of examples taken from both medical (human) and veterinary (animal) disciplines, and describes both infectious diseases and non-infectious conditions. Furthermore, it provides worked examples of methodologies using a single data set from the same disease example throughout, and is structured to follow the logical sequence of description of spatial data, visualisation, exploration, modelling and decision support. This accessible text is aimed at graduate students and researchers dealing with spatial data in the fields of epidemiology (both medical and veterinary), ecology, zoology and parasitology, environmental science, geography, and statistics.