GIS on Weekend: SIG EPI dan SaTScan
The 4th meeting at the “GIS on Weekend” on last Saturday (23/08/08) was presenting topic of SlG Epi and SaTScan utilization for epidemiology. Those applications can perform health spatial data analysis.
SIG Epi is current GIS application developed by Health Analysis Information and System-Pan American Heatlh Organization (HAIS–PAHO) for spatial analysis in epidemiology. PAHO has cooperated with ESRI to develop SIG Epi so that only shapefile (SHP) format can be run by this application. The output is useful for people who concern on epidemiology and public health, also for managerial decision maker. It has several features, such as descriptive statistic, correlation, health service, etc. The strength point of this apllication is package of data analysis including in the application (on menu of epi analysis) so that it does not need additional application to do analysis.
The SIG Epi can be downloaded at http://ais.paho.org:80/sigepi/dwld/SIGEpi_En.zip, It is free trial for the 90 days and we can buy the licensed one for the full version. It can be run by using Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/Xp. It needs processor of 486, pentium, or higher and memory of 128 MB with 40MB free spaces.
SaTScan is a free software that analyzes spatial, temporal and space-time data using the spatial, temporal, or space-time scan statistics. It is designed for any of the following interrelated purposes:
- Perform geographical surveillance of disease, to detect spatial or space-time disease clusters, and to see if they are statistically significant.
- Test whether a disease is randomly distributed over space, over time or over space and time.
- Evaluate the statistical significance of disease cluster alarms.
- Perform repeated time-periodic disease surveillance for early detection of disease outbreaks.
To perform the SaTScan output in map, we need application of Epi Info or ArcView-GIS. So you can install those two applications together with the SaTScan to produce the spatial analysis map.
At last, this GIS on weekend training has been ended for this August. Hopefully, we will arrange the similar training after the Ramadhan. For anyone who is interested in being the GIS expert, don’t worry! You still have a chance to make it real.