Using simulated data to investigate the spatial patterns of obesity prevalence at the census tract level in metropolitan Detroit

Obesity is a serious public health problem in the United States. It is important to estimate obesity prevalence at the local level to target programmatic and policy interventions. It is challenging, however, to obtain local estimates of obesity prevalence because national health surveys such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) are not designed to produce direct estimates at the local levels (e.g. census tracts) due to small population samples and the need to preserve individual confidentiality. In this study we address the problem of estimating local obesity prevalence rates by implementing a spatial microsimulation modeling technique to proportionally replicate the demographic characteristics of BRFSS respondents to census tract populations in metropolitan Detroit. Obesity prevalence rates are examined for high and low spatial clusters and studied in relation to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) measures of low-income neighborhoods and local food deserts and CDC's measure of healthy and less healthy food environments currently used to target obesity reduction initiatives. This study found that obesity prevalence was largely clustered in the City of Detroit extending north into contiguous suburbs. The spatial patterns of highest obesity prevalence tracts were most similarly aligned with USDA-defined low-income tracts and CDC's less healthy food tracts. The locations of USDA's food desert tracts rarely overlapped with the highest obesity prevalence tracts. This study demonstrated a new methodology by which to assess local areas in need of future obesity interventions.     

‘Pour votre tranquillité’: Ambiance,atmosphere, and surveillance

This is a paper concerned with security, surveillance and notions of atmosphere and ambience. Whilst surveillance and security research has been excellent at examining socio-spatial relations drawn into the production and consumption of surveillance technologies, systems and practices, it has been far less well attuned to the material–affective relations, presences and absences it comes to constitute as the fabric of public space. Research within human geography and a broader ‘new materialism’ within the humanities and social sciences has become increasingly interested in exploring affective atmospheres, yet largely ignorant of a well established school of thought within French urban and social theory of ‘ambiance’. This paper explores the providence of considering atmospheres and ambiances for the examination of surveillance through the case study of two major railway stations in Britain and France. The paper proffers some methods and techniques for the further exploration of atmospheres/ambiances of security.     

地震海啸监测预警现状与进展

2004年12月26日印度洋地震大海啸引起了全世界公众的关注和政府的重视,如何预防地震海啸造成的灾害,建立有效的预警机制,成为政府和社会关注的话题。介绍了国内外地震海啸监测预警的历史、现状与当前的发展方向。     

基于Ajax的WebGIS疾病监控系统的设计

目前,GIS正向着网络化、共享化的方向发展,逐渐形成了基于各种技术的WebGIS系统.其中,利用Ajax技术,通过异步通信和动态更新使服务器端的事件更少,能够发送更少的请求获取更少量的数据,仅仅刷新页面的一部分.这无疑为传统的各种WebGIS应用系统中庞大的数据传输提供了有效的帮助.     

In the name of Development: Power,profit and the datafication of the global South

We examine the current ‘datafication’ process underway in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and the power shifts it is creating in the field of international development. The use of new communications and database technologies in LMICs is generating ‘big data’ (for example from the use of mobile phones, mobile-based financial services and the internet) which is collected and processed by corporations. When shared, these data are also becoming a potentially valuable resource for development research and policy. With these new sources of data, new power structures are emerging within the field of development. We identify two trends in particular, illustrating them with examples: first, the empowerment of public–private partnerships around datafication in LMICs and the consequently growing agency of corporations as development actors. Second, the way commercially generated big data is becoming the foundation for country-level ‘data doubles’, i.e. digital representations of social phenomena and/or territories that are created in parallel with, and sometimes in lieu of, national data and statistics. We explore the resulting shift from legibility (Scott, 1998) to visibility, and the implications of seeing development interventions as a byproduct of larger-scale processes of informational capitalism.     

“I…don’t want to see you flashing your bits around”: Exhibitionism,othering and good motherhood in perceptions of public breastfeeding

Stigma and concern about public breastfeeding have been identified as contributing towards low breastfeeding rates in high-income countries. Despite this, very little research has examined public perceptions of breastfeeding. Among existing studies, lack of familiarity with breastfeeding, sexist views and hyper-sexualisation of the breast were identified alongside discomfort at viewing breastfeeding by strangers. During 2014, in the United Kingdom (UK), several cases of women being criticised for breastfeeding in public appeared in national newspapers. A Critical Discourse Analysis approach was used to theoretically frame analysis of 884 naturally occurring comments relating to a protest supporting women’s right to breastfeed in public from the UK’s most popular online news site, Mail Online. Findings are discussed in relation to mothers’ roles as citizens and sexual beings, with a particular focus on the visibility of breasts in public space. Women who breastfeed in public were viewed as unattractive, lazy, bad parents and lacking in self-respect. More specifically, women who breastfed in public were viewed as exhibitionist. This was contrasted with the desirability of breastfeeding within the home, which was seen as an appropriate way to feed an infant. The undesirability of public breastfeeding was inherently linked to sexuality, with breastfeeding women viewed as sexual aggressors (“flashers”) or inviting sexual contact from men. It is argued that these views originate in unequal gender relationships in society and the framing of breasts as sexual rather than nurturing. These discourses are played out in public space in which mothers are marginalised in a patriarchal society.     

Linking spatial data from different sources: the effects of change of support

A nationwide Environmental Public Health Tracking program is being created to monitor environmental impacts on human health. This, and many other efforts to relate environmental and health outcomes, depend largely on the synthesis of existing data sets; little new data are being generated for this purpose. More often than not, the data available for such synthesis have been collected for different geographic or spatial units, and any set of these units may be different from the one of interest. In this paper, we compare and contrast two approaches that can be used within a Geographic Information System to link spatial data from different sources. The first approach works with centroids of areal units and is commonly used in environmental health analyses. The second approach honors the spatial support (size, shape and orientation) of the data. Using traditional regression models and a spatially-varying coefficient regression model, we show that different linkage methods can lead to different inference. We describe key ideas pertaining to the support of spatial data that are often ignored in many analyses of environmental health data and present a general analytical approach to change-of-support problems.     

The automatic management of drivers and driving spaces

In this paper, we examine the development and implementation of new technical systems designed to more effectively manage and produce driving, drivers and driving spaces. These new systems change the governmentality of automobilities by altering the relationship between driver, vehicle and transport infrastructure and produce new subjects and spaces. They do this principally through the process of automation, creating a system of regulation that we term ‘automated management’. Automated management consists of two interlocking sets of regulatory technologies: automated surveillance that seeks to enforce more effective (self)disciplining and capture systems that actively reshape activity. We argue that these work together to alter the automobilities landscape creating new socio-spatial arrangements with respect to access, movement, flow, and behaviour. Some of these arrangements are benign and empowering to individuals, others enhance the power of state and corporations. We illustrate our argument with examples predominately drawn from the UK, though the technologies we discuss are increasingly being developed and implemented throughout Western countries and beyond.     

海域无人机监视监测业务流程设计

文章主要探讨海域无人机监视监测业务流程,针对目前海域动态监视监测工作中无人机管理模式及作业流程的现状,结合海域资源开发管理业务需求,阐述规范无人机作业流程的必要性。按照无人机监测任务的紧迫程度分为常规监测任务和应急监测任务,以规范无人机业务流程、提高无人机作业效率、保障无人机作业安全为目的,并结合无人机业务工作中的实际情况对两类监测任务的无人机作业流程进行了探讨与设计。