Reporting items in disease mapping: A knowledge synthesis evaluating zoonotic infectious diseases
-
1
Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Canada
Background: The increasing availability of spatial data and mapping software makes disease mapping widely practiced and accessible. Although disease maps are ubiquitous and are regarded as informative communication tools in public health, there are no widely agreed upon and established guidelines for their proper reporting. Study objectives were to: a) identify reporting characteristics of disease maps, b) assess disease map purposes and applications, and c) identify whether challenges and biases in geospatial analyses were reported.
Methods: Two reviewers conducted duplicate screening of research articles identified from a search in Medline and appropriate databases within the last two years for disease maps of zoonotic infectious diseases. A third reviewer resolved any disagreements on study selection. Applying integrated knowledge translation, experts in the field (e.g., spatial epidemiologists, health geographers, GIS educators, public health professionals) were consulted to inform data charting fields of interest. Reporting characteristics were extracted and summarized as informed by research questions and data charting.
Summary of results: A sample of 100 articles meeting eligibility criteria suggest a majority of published disease maps do not report map elements such as projection parameters - relevant for reproducibility, and interpretations of geospatial analyses. For example, “distances” can vary based on projection parameters that are used, and thus all the statistics that are based on such distance measures. This includes “Cluster detection” methods such as the spatial scan test.
Conclusions: The findings from this investigation identifies gaps and inconsistencies in the reporting of basic map information in the literature and support the development of an evidence-based reporting guideline for disease maps.
Keywords:
Disease mapping,
Spatial Epidemiology,
Open Science,
knowledge synthesis,
Geographacial Information System (GIS)
Conference:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data, Davis, United States, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Student Poster-session
Topic:
Spatial data sources, open data, accessibility and information integration
Citation:
Selvaratnam
I,
Berke
O,
Thaivalappil
A,
Imada
J,
Vythilingam
M,
Beardsall
A,
Hachborn
G,
Ugas
M,
Forrest
R and
Sargeant
JM
(2019). Reporting items in disease mapping: A knowledge synthesis evaluating zoonotic infectious diseases.
Front. Vet. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fvets.2019.05.00050
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
20 Jun 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Mx. Inthuja Selvaratnam, Department of Population Medicine, Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada, iselvara@uoguelph.ca