This lecture introduces the three fields that this course will cover: landscape ecology, health geography, and crime analysis in relation to GIS. GIS helps researchers to determine where do things happen, why do they happen where they happened, and how geography influences the context of things.

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Landscape ecology is the study of interrelationships between organisms and their environments. Landscape ecology differs from ecology since it focuses on analyzing the biotic and abiotic pattern and process. Researchers discover how one patch influence the other in landscape ecology. Whereas ecology focuses on the biotic and abiotic environment, where individual sites are treated as objects and geography is removed from the analysis. The two most common things to look at in landscape ecology is matrix and corridors.

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Health geography studies the role of place, space, and community in shaping health outcomes and healthcare delivery. There are three major themes in health geography: disease ecology, health care delivery, and environment and health. Disease ecology studies the distribution of diseases and cultural phenomena associated with it. Health care delivery focuses on analyzing the distribution and accessibility of health care. Environment and health approach includes environmental risk assessment, as well as health impact of environmental issues.

 

Crime analysis studies crime patterns and trend. It helps governments and institutions to prevent and suppress criminal activities.

 

Why do we use GIS to analyze these approaches? GIS is able to find an interaction between variable, integrate data together, and it is a comprehensive method that integrates disciplines such as remote sensing, surveying, photogrammetry, spatial analysis, cartography, and computer science.

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