In the spatial epidemiology, geographical epidemiology, or medical geography, we use maps as useful tools for illuminating potental "causes" of disease. Given a scientific research question of interest, spatial statistics utilized as means for detecting and quantifying pattern in public health data (that contain location information), and to investigate degree of association between potential risk factors and disease.
There are three typical types of research objective within the field spatial epidemiology:
1. Disease mapping study
2. Disease clustering detection study
3. Disease correlation (Linking exposure - disease) study
Knowledge required: Epidemiology, Biostatistics, & GIS
Skills required: Operate softwares for Data management (I find microsoft access is very useful), Mapping (QGIS), Statistics (R), & Spatial statistics (OpenGeoda)
Essential concepts:
Spatial Autocorrelation, Variance Instability, Complete Spatial Randomness.
