A street-view-based method to detect urban growth and decline: A case study of Midtown in Detroit, Michigan, USA.

Urban growth and decline occur every year and show changes in urban areas. Although various approaches to detect urban changes have been developed, they mainly use large-scale satellite imagery and socioeconomic factors in urban areas, which provides an overview of urban changes. However, since people explore places and notice changes daily at the street level, it would be useful to develop a method to identify urban changes at the street level and demonstrate whether urban growth or decline occurs there. Thus, this study seeks to use street-level panoramic images from Google Street View to identify urban changes and to develop a new way to evaluate the growth and decline of an urban area. After collecting Google Street View images year by year, we trained and developed a deep-learning model of an object detection process using the open-source software TensorFlow. By scoring objects and changes detected on a street from year to year, a map of urban growth and decline was generated for Midtown in Detroit, Michigan, USA. By comparing socioeconomic changes and the situations of objects and changes in Midtown, the proposed method is shown to be helpful for analyzing urban growth and decline by using year-by-year street view images.

Mapping conflict of interests: scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: To identify all known ties between the medical product industry and the healthcare ecosystem. DESIGN: Scoping review. METHODS: From initial literature searches and expert input, a map was created to show the network of medical product industry ties across parties and activities in the healthcare ecosystem. Through a scoping review, the ties were then verified, cataloged, and characterized, with data abstracted on types of industry ties (financial, non-financial), applicable policies for conflict of interests, and publicly available data sources. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Presence and types of medical product industry ties to activities and parties, presence of policies for conflict of interests, and publicly available data. RESULTS: A map derived through synthesis of 538 articles from 37 countries shows an extensive network of medical product industry ties to activities and parties in the healthcare ecosystem. Key activities include research, healthcare education, guideline development, formulary selection, and clinical care. Parties include non-profit entities, the healthcare profession, the market supply chain, and government. The medical product industry has direct ties to all parties and some activities through multiple pathways; direct ties extend through interrelationships among parties and activities. The most frequently identified parties were within the healthcare profession, with individual professionals described in 422 (78%) of the included studies. More than half (303, 56%) of the publications documented medical product industry ties to research, with clinical care (156, 29%), health professional education (145, 27%), guideline development (33, 6%), and formulary selection (8, 1%) appearing less often. Policies for conflict of interests exist for some financial and a few non-financial ties; publicly available data sources seldom describe or quantify these ties. CONCLUSIONS: An extensive network of medical product industry ties to activities and parties exists in the healthcare ecosystem. Policies for conflict of interests and publicly available data are lacking, suggesting that enhanced oversight and transparency are needed to protect patient care from commercial influence and to ensure public trust.

Influence of traffic accessibility on land use based on Landsat imagery and internet map: A case study of the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration.

Taking the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration, with its rapid economic and social development and dramatic changes in land use, as an example with which to conduct this research, this paper analyzes the influence of traffic accessibility on land use and socioeconomic development by using Internet maps, points of interest (POI), and data about land use and socioeconomic development. The results of this study are as follows: (1) the calculation results of traffic accessibility can reflect the real situation because spatial distribution has an obvious feature of circle-like structure, and the development level of each township has high consistency; (2) major change characteristics in land use are that cultivated and forest lands are decreasing, and construction land is increasing, and it is obvious that the increase of construction land is featured by spatial autocorrelation and clusters of construction areas along the city borders; (3) traffic accessibility has a significant impact on land use status and changes and socioeconomic development, while the number of facilities has weak impact on land use, which is a reflection of advanced infrastructure in the urban agglomeration; and (4) the construction of transport infrastructure promotes the transformation of land use from water to construction land, therefore, more emphasis should be placed on protecting the river system in future infrastructure construction so as to improve the ecological benefits in the river basin.

A global assessment of street-network sprawl.

Disconnected urban street networks, which we call "street-network sprawl," are strongly associated with increased vehicle travel, energy use and CO2 emissions, as shown by previous research in Europe and North America. In this paper, we provide the first systematic and globally commensurable measures of street-network sprawl based on graph-theoretic and geographic concepts. Using data on all 46 million km of mapped streets worldwide, we compute these measures for the entire Earth at the highest possible resolution. We generate a summary scalar measure for street-network sprawl, the Street-Network Disconnectedness index (SNDi), as well as a data-driven multidimensional classification that identifies eight empirical street-network types that span the spectrum of connectivity, from gridiron to dendritic (tree-like) and circuitous networks. Our qualitative validation shows that both the scalar and multidimensional measures are meaningfully comparable within and across countries, and successfully capture varied dimensions of walkability and urban development. We further show that in select high-income countries, our measures explain cross-sectional variation in household transportation decisions, and a one standard-deviation increase in SNDi is associated with an extra 0.25 standard deviations in cars owned per household. We aggregate our measures to the scale of countries, cities, and smaller geographies and describe patterns in street-network sprawl around the world. Latin America, Japan, South Korea, much of Europe, and North Africa stand out for their low levels of street-network sprawl, while the highest levels are found in south-east Asia, the United States, and the British Isles. Our calculations provide the foundation for future work to understand urban processes, predict future pathways of transportation energy consumption and emissions, and identify effective policy responses.

Guía para la elaboración de un croquis / Guide for drawing a sketch

Con esta guía se busca poder consolidar el ordenamiento territorial según los territorios y sectores, recabar información importante de la fuente directa, misma que será un insumo trascendental para definir el tipo de servicios que se necesitan brindar en cada ubicación, al contar con información importante del terreno, la distribución de las viviendas y de la población que son determinantes para la programación de las acciones intra y extramuros, así como para la promoción de acciones sanitarias. Este recurso es importante para implementar y definir la cartera de servicios de salud así como la estrategia de las Redes Integradas de Servicios de Salud dentro del marco de la Atención Primaria en Salud, con la cual se espera poder fortalecer la atención integral e integrada a la población en general. El Croquis es un recurso indispensable para la planificación, programación, organización y monitoreo de los servicios que entregan los equipos de salud.

The Egyptian health map: a guide for evidence-based decision-making

Background: The Egyptian health system is characterized by the multiple entities in charge of service regulation, financ-ing and provision. Moreover, health outcomes in Egypt mirror epidemiologic transition; increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and persistent high levels of selected communicable diseases (CDs) place a huge financial burden on the health system’s limited resources. This together with financial inefficiencies aggravate inequality in health services coverage and health outcomes. Aims: We aimed to map and link health services with key health outcomes to support efficient utilization of scarce re-sources and achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC).Methods: Data on health services and health outcomes were obtained from the Ministry of Health and Population and key national surveys for the year 2014. Data on health services’ availability and coverage were compared in different ge-ographical regions. Correlation analysis was used to test the relation between selected service availability indicators and mortality rates from key NCDs.Results: There was a high coverage of key maternal and child health services. However, there was in general low achieve-ment of national targets for service availability as well as wide geographical disparities. Cardiovascular diseases were the leading cause of death and there was a marked reduction in the incidence of major CDs in Egypt, particularly vaccine preventable diseases.Conclusion: : Wide geographical disparities and increased burden of NCDs and their risk factors are identified as key challenges facing the healthcare system in Egypt. Priority setting in the light of these findings is crucial to support nation-al efforts to attain health equity and UHC.

Contexte : Le système de santé égyptien se caractérise par la multiplicité des entités chargées de la réglementation, du financement et de la prestation de services. En outre, les résultats sanitaires en Égypte reflètent la transition épidémiologique ; l’augmentation de la prévalence des maladies non transmissibles (MNT) et les niveaux élevés persistants de certaines maladies transmissibles font peser une énorme charge financière sur les ressources limitées du système de santé. Cette situation, conjuguée à l’inefficacité financière, aggrave les inégalités en matière de couverture des services de santé et de résultats sanitaires. Objectifs : Notre objectif était de cartographier et de relier les services de santé aux principaux résultats sanitaires afin de favoriser l’utilisation efficace des ressources limitées et de réaliser la couverture sanitaire universelle (CSU).Méthodes : Les données sur les services de santé et les résultats sanitaires ont été obtenues du ministère de la Santé et de la Population ainsi qu’à partir des principales enquêtes nationales pour l’année 2014. Les données sur la disponibilité et la couverture des services de santé ont été comparées dans différentes régions géographiques. Une analyse de corrélation a été utilisée pour tester la relation entre certains indicateurs de disponibilité des services et les taux de mortalité due aux principales MNT.Résultats : Les principaux services de santé maternelle et infantile étaient largement couverts. Toutefois, dans l’ensemble, les objectifs nationaux en matière de disponibilité des services n’ont guère été atteints et les disparités géographiques étaient importantes. Les maladies cardio-vasculaires représentaient la principale cause de décès et l’incidence des principales maladies chroniques en Égypte, en particulier des maladies à prévention vaccinale, a nettement diminué.Conclusions : Les larges disparités géographiques et l’augmentation de la charge des maladies non transmissibles et de leurs facteurs de risque sont identifiées comme les principaux défis auxquels le système de santé égyptien est confronté. L’établissement des priorités à la lumière de ces résultats est crucial pour appuyer les efforts nationaux visant à atteindre l’équité en santé et réaliser la CSU.

'Scarier than another storm': values at risk in the mapping and insuring of US floodplains.

How do people respond to the ways in which insurance mediates environmental risks? Socio-cultural risk research has characterized and analyzed the experiential dimension of risk, but has yet to focus on insurance, which is a key institution shaping how people understand and relate to risk. Insurance not only assesses and communicates risk; it also economizes it, making the problem on the ground not just one of risk, but also of value. This article addresses these issues with an investigation of the social life of the flood insurance rate map, the central technology of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), as it grafts a new landscape of 'value at risk' onto the physical and social world of New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Like other risk technologies, ubiquitous in modern societies as decision-making and planning tools, the map disseminates information about value and risk in order to tame uncertainty and enable prudent action oriented toward the future. However, drawing together interview, ethnographic, and documentary data, I find that for its users on the ground, the map does not simply measure 'value at risk' in ways that produce clear strategies for protecting property values from flooding. Instead, it puts values-beyond simply the financial worth of places-at risk, as well as implicates past, present, and future risks beyond simply flooding. By informing and enlarging the stakes of what needs protecting, and from what, I argue that plural and interacting 'values at risk' shape how people live with and respond to environmental risks that are mediated by insurance technologies.

Comparison of spatial interpolation methods to create high-resolution poverty maps for low- and middle-income countries.

High-resolution poverty maps are important tools for promoting equitable and sustainable development. In settings without data at every location, we can use spatial interpolation (SI) to create such maps using sample-based surveys and additional covariates. In the model-based geostatistics (MBG) framework for SI, it is typically assumed that the similarity of two areas is inversely related to their distance between one another. Applications of spline interpolation take a contrasting approach that an area's absolute location and its characteristics are more important for prediction than distance to/characteristics of other locations. This study compares prediction accuracy of the MBG approach with spline interpolation as part of a generalized additive model (GAM) for four low- and middle-income countries. We also identify any potentially generalizable data characteristics influencing comparative accuracy. We found spatially scattered pockets of wealth in Malawi and Tanzania (corresponding to the major cities), and overarching spatial gradients in Kenya and Nigeria. Spline interpolation/GAM performed better than MBG for Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania, but marginally worse in Kenya. We conclude that the spatial patterns of wealth and other covariates should be carefully accounted for when choosing the best SI approach. This is particularly pertinent as different methods capture geographical variation differently.

A global map of travel time to cities to assess inequalities in accessibility in 2015.

The economic and man-made resources that sustain human wellbeing are not distributed evenly across the world, but are instead heavily concentrated in cities. Poor access to opportunities and services offered by urban centres (a function of distance, transport infrastructure, and the spatial distribution of cities) is a major barrier to improved livelihoods and overall development. Advancing accessibility worldwide underpins the equity agenda of 'leaving no one behind' established by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. This has renewed international efforts to accurately measure accessibility and generate a metric that can inform the design and implementation of development policies. The only previous attempt to reliably map accessibility worldwide, which was published nearly a decade ago, predated the baseline for the Sustainable Development Goals and excluded the recent expansion in infrastructure networks, particularly in lower-resource settings. In parallel, new data sources provided by Open Street Map and Google now capture transportation networks with unprecedented detail and precision. Here we develop and validate a map that quantifies travel time to cities for 2015 at a spatial resolution of approximately one by one kilometre by integrating ten global-scale surfaces that characterize factors affecting human movement rates and 13,840 high-density urban centres within an established geospatial-modelling framework. Our results highlight disparities in accessibility relative to wealth as 50.9% of individuals living in low-income settings (concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa) reside within an hour of a city compared to 90.7% of individuals in high-income settings. By further triangulating this map against socioeconomic datasets, we demonstrate how access to urban centres stratifies the economic, educational, and health status of humanity.

No âmago da africanização: pessoas negras e de cor nos mapas populacionais do Maranhão colonial (1798-1821) / At the Core of Africanization: Black and Colored People in Population Maps of Colonial Maranhão, Brazil (1798-1821) / En el núcleo de africanización: pueblo negro y de color en los mapas de población del Maranhão colonial, Brasil (1798-1821)

O estudo analisa o "boom" demográfico das populações escravas de origem africana nas áreas de plantation a partir dos Mapas Estatísticos do Maranhão. Em especial, focalizamos a freguesia do Rosário do Itapecuru utilizando outras fontes documentais - inventários post mortem e registros paroquiais de batismo. Os Mapas de 1798 e 1821 possibilitaram evidenciar o perfil sexual, etário, étnico e a condição jurídica da população, mostrando a importância da população escrava nas áreas de cultivo do algodão e arroz, que chegava a quase 80% dos residentes. Essas populações, por sua vez, guardavam algumas particularidades em relação a outras áreas de plantation do Estado do Brasil, como, por exemplo, a razão de sexo marcada pela quase paridade entre homens e mulheres.

The study analyzes the demographic boom of African slave populations in the plantation areas from the Mapas de População of Maranhão. In particular, we focus on the parish of Rosário do Itapecuru using other sources - post-mortem inventories and parish baptismal records. The maps from 1798 and 1821 made it possible to evidence the gender, age, ethnicity and legal status of the resident population as well as show the importance of slave population in cotton and rice crop areas, reaching almost 80% of residents. These populations, in turn, presented certain peculiarities in relation to other plantation areas in the State of Brazil, such as the sex ratio marked by the almost parity between men and women.

El estudio analiza el boom de las poblaciones esclavas de origen africano en las áreas de plantación a partir de los Mapas Estadísticos de Maranhão. En particular, nos centramos en la parroquia Rosario del Itapecurú utilizando otras fuentes documentales: inventarios post mortem y registros parroquiales de bautismo. Los mapas de 1798 y 1821 posibilitaron evidenciar el perfil sexual, la edad, la condición étnica y jurídica de la población residente y muestran la importancia de la población esclava en las áreas de cultivo de algodón y de arroz, que llega a casi 80% de los residentes. Estas poblaciones mantenían a su vez algunas peculiaridades en relación con otras áreas de plantación del Estado de Brasil, por ejemplo, la proporción de sexos marcada por la casi paridad entre hombres y mujeres.

Maps of heavy metals in the soils of the European Union and proposed priority areas for detailed assessment.

Soil contamination is one of the greatest concerns among the threats to soil resources in Europe and globally. Despite of its importance there was only very course scale (1/5000km(2)) data available on soil heavy metal concentrations prior to the LUCAS topsoil survey, which had a sampling density of 200km(2). Based on the results of the LUCAS sampling and auxiliary information detailed and up-to-date maps of heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb, Zn, Sb, Co and Ni) in the topsoil of the European Union were produced. Using the maps of heavy metal concentration in topsoil we made a spatial prediction of areas where local assessment is suggested to monitor and eventually control the potential threat from heavy metals. Most of the examined elements remain under the corresponding threshold values in the majority of the land of the EU. However, one or more of the elements exceed the applied threshold concentration on 1.2Mkm(2), which is 28.3% of the total surface area of the EU. While natural backgrounds might be the reason for high concentrations on large proportion of the affected soils, historical and recent industrial and mining areas show elevated concentrations (predominantly of As, Cd, Pb and Hg) too, indicating the magnitude of anthropogenic effect on soil quality in Europe.

A procedure of landscape services assessment based on mosaics of patches and boundaries.

We develop a procedure for assessing the environmental value of landscape mosaics that simultaneously considers the values of land use patches and the values of the boundaries between them. These boundaries indicate the ecological interactions between the patches. A landscape mosaic is defined as a set of patches and the boundaries between them and corresponds to a spatial pattern of ecological interactions. The procedure is performed in two steps: (i) an environmental assessment of land use patches by means of a function that integrates values based on the goods and services the patches provide, and (ii) an environmental valuation of mosaics using a function that integrates the environmental values of their patches and the types and frequencies of the boundaries between them. This procedure allows us to measure how changes in land uses or in their spatial arrangement cause variations in the environmental value of landscape mosaics and therefore in that of the whole landscape. The procedure was tested in the Sierra Norte of Madrid (central Spain). The results show that the environmental values of the landscape depend not only on the land use patches but also on the values associated with the pattern of the boundaries within the mosaics. The results also highlight the importance of the boundaries between land use patches as determinants of the goods and services provided by the landscape.

Using a map-based assessment tool for the development of cost-effective WFD river basin action programmes in a changing climate.

For the 2nd and 3rd river basin management cycles (2015-2027) of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), EU Member States are required to fully integrate climate change into the process of river basin management planning (RBMP). Complying with the main WFD objective of achieving 'good ecological status' in all water bodies in Denmark requires Programmes of Measures (PoMs) to reduce nitrogen (N) pollution from point and diffuse sources. Denmark is among the world's most intensively farmed countries and in spite of thirty years of significant policy actions to reduce diffuse nutrient emissions, there is still a need for further reductions. In addition, the impacts of climate change are projected to lead to a situation where nutrient loads will have to be reduced still further in comparison to current climate conditions. There is an urgent need to address this challenge in WFD action programmes in order to develop robust and cost-effective adaptation strategies for the next WFD RBMP cycles. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate and discuss how a map-based PoMs assessment tool can support the development of adaptive and cost-effective strategies to reduce N losses in the Isefjord and Roskilde Fjord River Basin in the north east of Denmark. The tool facilitates assessments of the application of agri-environmental measures that are targeted towards low retention agricultural areas, where limited or no surface and subsurface N reduction takes place. Effects of climate change on nitrate leaching were evaluated using the dynamic agro-ecosystem model 'Daisy'. Results show that nitrate leaching rates increase by approx. 25% under current management practices. This impact outweighs the expected total N reduction effect of Baseline 2015 and the first RBMP in the case study river basin. The particular PoMs investigated in our study show that WFD N reduction targets can be achieved by targeted land use changes on approx. 4% of the agricultural area under current climate conditions and approx. 9% of the agricultural area, when projected climate change impacts on nitrate leaching rates are included in the assessment. The study highlights the potential of the PoMs assessment tool to assist in evaluation of alternative WFD RBMP scenarios to achieve spatially targeted and cost-effective reductions of N loads at catchment scale in the context of a changing climate.

A conduit between epidemiological research and regional health policy.

OBJECTIVE: To transform data from a research setting into a format that could be used to support strategies encouraging healthy lifestyle choices and service planning within local government. METHODS: Details of the health status and lifestyle behaviours of the Geelong, Victoria, population were generated independently by the Geelong Osteoporosis Study (GOS), a prospective population-based cohort study. Recent GOS follow-up phases provided evidence about patterns of unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, smoking and harmful alcohol use. These factors are well-recognised modifiable risk factors for chronic disease; the dataset was complemented with prevalence estimates for musculoskeletal disease, obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, asthma and cancer. RESULTS: Data were provided to Healthy Together Geelong in aggregate form according to age, sex and suburb. A population statistics company used the data to project health outcomes by suburb for use by local council. This data exchange served as a conduit between epidemiological research and policy development. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Regional policy makers were informed by local evidence, rather than national or state health survey, thereby optimising potential intervention strategies.

Role of spatial tools in public health policymaking of Bangladesh: opportunities and challenges.

In spite of the increasing efforts to gather spatial data in developing countries, the use of maps is mostly for visualization of health indicators rather than informed decision-making. Various spatial tools can aid policymakers to allocate resources effectively, predict patterns in communicable or infectious diseases, and provide insights into geographical factors which are associated with utilization or adequacy of health services. In Bangladesh, the launch of District Health Information System 2, along with recent efforts to gather spatial data of facilities location, provides an interesting opportunity to study the current landscape and the potential barriers in advancing the use of spatial tools for informed decision making. This study assessed the current level of map usage and spatial tools for health sector planning in Bangladesh, focusing on investigating why map usage and spatial tools remained at a basic level for the purpose of health policy. The study design involved in-depth interviews, followed by an expert survey (n = 39) obtained through snowball sampling.Our survey revealed that assessing areas with shortage of community health workers emerged as the top most for basic map usage or primarily for visualization purpose, while planning for emergency and obstetric care services, and disease mapping was the most frequent category for intermediate and advanced map usage, respectively. Furthermore, we found lack of inter-institutional collaboration, lack of continuous availability of trained personnel, and lack of awareness on the use of geographic information system (GIS) as a decision-making tool as three most critical barriers in the current landscape. Our findings highlight the barriers in increasing the adoption of spatial tools for health policymaking and planning in Bangladesh.

Does smoke cross the border? Cigarette tax avoidance in France.

This paper examines the impact on cigarette sales of the successive increases in cigarette prices in France from 2002 to 2004. Since the price differential between France and neighboring countries increased over the period in question, cross-border purchases became more financially attractive for smokers living near borders. Results from difference-in-differences estimates indicate that the decrease in cigarette sales observed in French border departments was around 20 % higher from 2004 to 2007 compared to non-border departments. The loss of fiscal revenue due to cross-border shopping since the tax increase amounts to 2 billion euros over the period 2002-2007. Our findings highlight the need for improved coordination of policies aimed at reducing tobacco consumption across European Union countries.

How Narrative Focus and a Statistical Map Shape Health Policy Support Among State Legislators.

This study attempts to advance theorizing about health policy advocacy with combinations of narrative focus and a statistical map in an attempt to increase state legislators' support for policies to address the issue of obesity by reducing food deserts. Specifically, we examine state legislators' responses to variations in narrative focus (individual vs. community) about causes and solutions for food deserts in U.S. communities, and a statistical map (presence vs. absence) depicting the prevalence of food deserts across the United States. Using a Web-based randomized experiment (N=496), we show that narrative focus and the statistical map interact to produce different patterns of cognitive response and support for policies to reduce the prevalence of food deserts. The presence of a statistical map showing the prevalence of food deserts in the United States appeared to matter only when combined with an individual narrative, offsetting the fact that the individual narrative in isolation produced fewer thoughts consistent with the story's persuasive goal and more counterarguments in opposition to environmental causes and solutions for obesity than other message conditions. The image did not have an impact when combined with a story describing a community at large. Cognitive responses fully mediated message effects on intended persuasive outcomes. We conclude by discussing the study's contributions to communication theory and practice.