A CyberGIS environment for spatiotemporal analysis: a case study of China mortality data

This thesis describes an online CyberGIS (cyberinfrastructure-based geographic information system) environment for a public health application. This CyberGIS application represents a new GIS application modality for protected access to public health data and related CyberGIS analytical and visualization services based on service-oriented architecture. A novel CyberGIS Open Service Application Programming Interface is employed to allow a number of users to execute multiple spatial analyses simultaneously on the backend powerful cyberinfrastructure. The user-centric interface of the CyberGIS application provides transparent access to cyberinfrastructure resources, which helps make the application scalable to the potential growth of the application users and pertinent public health researchers and users. A case study is designed to examine spatial distribution characteristics of mortality rates in the mainland of China for the period of 1991 – 2000, using a suite of spatial data analysis methods integrated within the CyberGIS application that supports interactive exploratory analysis. The application demonstrates the novelty and utility of CyberGIS in this public health case study in the following four aspects. 1. Spatial pattern analyses combined with a set of visualization tools built on a CyberGIS infrastructure allow users to interactively explore the spatiotemporal distributions of heterogeneous data. 2. A highly interactive and easy-to-access user interface supporting temporal analysis allows users without in-depth GIS technical skills to experience an easy, efficient, and secure way to gain insights into the data. 3. Multiple users can access the application based on cloud computing support. 4. CyberGIS protects sensitive public health data based on a distributed database while enabling the dissemination of analytical insights based on the visualizations of spatial analyses.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Geography

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2013

Author dc:creator

• Han, Su

Contributors dc:contributor

• Wang, Shaowen

• CyberGIS
• Web-Based Geographic Information Systems
• Public Health
• Self-Organizing Map
• China
• Mortality

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2012 Su Han

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/42425

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/42425