The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023

This session was streamed but not recorded

Curated Track: 

Description:

Public health is inextricably linked to geospatial context. Where, when, and how people interact with natural, social, built, economic and cultural environments directly influence human health outcomes, policy making, planning and implementation, especially for infectious diseases such as COVID-19, HIV, and influenza. Geospatial data has long been used in health studies, dating back to John Snows’ groundbreaking mapping of cholera outbreaks in London, and continuing today in a wide range of scientific inquiries, e.g., examining the effects of environmental, neighborhood, and demographic factors on health outcomes, understanding accessibility and utilization of health services, modeling the spread of infectious diseases, assessing the effectiveness of disease interventions, and developing better healthcare strategies to improve health outcomes and equity.

Emerging sources of geospatial big data, such as data collected from social sensing, remote sensing, and health sensing (health wearables) contain rich information about the environmental, social, population, and individual factors for health that are not available in traditional health data and population statistics. Along with innovative spatial and computing methodologies in GIScience, geospatial big data provides unprecedented opportunities for advancing the infectious disease research. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic further highlights the demand on and the power of big data and spatial analysis in modeling, simulating, mapping, and predicting the spread of infectious diseases and their intervention across the world.

We warmly welcome topics related to recent advancements in leveraging geospatial big data and spatial analysis in infectious disease-related research at the 2023 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting.

Symposium Description:

The Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE, https://iguide.illinois.edu) is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea initiative (https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/big_ideas/harnessing.jsp). Sponsored by I-GUIDE, this symposium will explore theories, concepts, methods, and tools focused on data-intensive geospatial understanding for driving innovative artificial intelligence (AI) and cyberGIS (cyber-based geographic information science and systems) approaches to address sustainability challenges such as aging infrastructure, biodiversity loss, and food and water insecurity.

At the AAG 2023 annual meeting, the Symposium on Harnessing the Geospatial Data Revolution for Sustainability Solutions will be held by building on the successes of previous Symposia focused on cyberGIS and geospatial data science at AAG annual meetings since 2011. A suite of paper and panel sessions will address cutting-edge advances of cyberGIS, geospatial AI and data science, and fundamental geospatial understanding derived from spatial and spatiotemporal data synthesis. The topical themes of the symposium will include, but are not limited to, frontiers of cyberGIS, geospatial AI and data science, high-performance computing approaches to geographic problem solving, geographic approaches to resilience and sustainability challenges enabled by AI and cyberGIS, and challenges and opportunities of education and workforce development in harnessing the geospatial data revolution.

Non-Presenting Participants