Using Census Data and GIS in Survey Sample Selection
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1
University of California, Davis, United States
Background: The “Wildfires and Health: Assessing the Toll in NOrthWest California” (WHAT NOW California) study at the UC Davis Environmental Health Science Center is conducting research to understand the broad picture of environmental and human health outcomes of recent wildfires.
Objective: The California Fire and Health Impacts survey is the tool used to gather data about individuals and families affected by the fires.
Methods: Stratified sample selection based on socioeconomic status (SES) and exposures to the fire were used to identify the target population for this survey. We obtained Census data and shapefiles, then formatted and merged the data using SAS. Combining of small adjacent Census blocks into larger clusters was needed to overcome sparseness, then we ranked each of the SES variables into quintiles by county to group more disadvantage population by SES status. The SES variables used were % of unemployment, % of Hispanic, % no post-secondary education and % home owners within each census block. The distance to fire parameter was established by calculating the shortest distance from a fire (maps obtained from CalFire) to each census block using ArcMap, giving a metric for the exposure to the fire and smoke. A ranking variable was created using tertiles based on SES and fire exposure ratings, categorizing each census block into one of nine for Low/Mid/High SES and Low/Mid/High Exposure.
Results: Using this technique, surveys are currently being conducted in response to the 2017 Santa Rosa fires in Napa County and the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County.
Conclusion: By using publicly available Census data and shapefiles, and utilizing the tools available, primarily ArcMap and SAS, we can perform statistically valid sampling to better evaluate the health and recovery disparities of lower income populations. This method could easily be generalized for other community needs for which the data is publicly available.
Keywords:
Arcmap,
wildfires,
SAS,
census data,
Shapefiles,
GIS
Conference:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data, Davis, United States, 8 Oct - 10 Oct, 2019.
Presentation Type:
Poster-session
Topic:
Spatial data sources, open data, accessibility and information integration
Citation:
Ludena Rodriguez
YJ,
Angel
E and
Hertz-Picciotto
I
(2019). Using Census Data and GIS in Survey Sample Selection.
Front. Vet. Sci.
Conference Abstract:
GeoVet 2019. Novel spatio-temporal approaches in the era of Big Data.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fvets.2019.05.00095
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Received:
31 May 2019;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Mx. Yunin J Ludena Rodriguez, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States, yludena@ucdavis.edu
Mx. Elizabeth Angel, University of California, Davis, Davis, United States, eeguerrero@ucdavis.edu