GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CARDIOVASCULAR MORTALITY IN COMUNIDAD VALENCIANA (SPAIN)

摘要

From an epidemiological point of view, the maps derived from this analysis show an excess of risk in the south coast of Comunidad Valenciana. The reasons for this excess are, however, unknown, and further research would be necessary, for example to test the hypothesis that the so-called 'Benidorm effect' has extended to other tourist municipalities in the area, where many retired foreigners live but do not register themselves as residents in Spain. As this example shows, GIS are powerful tools in this type of analysis. They help to speed up the analysis, thereby enabling faster response times to queries, and the possibility to develop more rapid and more targeted interventions. As GIS become more useful, however, they show the need to grow in two directions: towards improving techniques of database management and towards integration of statistical analysis procedures. Most statistical techniques used in epidemiology can be implemented to a greater or lesser extent via the programming languages incorporated in proprietary GIS software. Moreover, there is already some connection between GIS and statistical software, making non-trivial statistical analysis increasingly feasible. This is very important in monitoring surveillance. A number of problems and limitations nevertheless remain. High resolution disease mapping, one of the most useful techniques in epidemiological studies, demands high-powered computation. While this can, to some extent, be performed efficiently with the available statistical software, many cannot be directly applied within GIS because of the current lack of inter-connectivity between GIS and statistical packages. We strongly believe that, to meet their full potential in epidemiology, GIS will need to develop to incorporate all these statistical tools. In this way they will become essential for epidemiologists and practitioners, not only as a graphical representation tool but as an analytical one as well.