title: Integrating GIS components with knowledge discovery technology for environmental health decision support.
abstract: This paper presents a new category of decision-support tools that builds on today's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) technologies to facilitate Geographic Knowledge Discovery (GKD). This new category, named Spatial OLAP (SOLAP), has been an R&D topic for about 5 years in a few university labs and is now being implemented by early adopters in different fields, including public health where it provides numerous advantages. In this paper, we present an example of a SOLAP application in the field of environmental health: the ICEM-SE project. After having presented this example, we describe the design of this system and explain how it provides fast and easy access to the detailed and aggregated data that are needed for GKD and decision-making in public health. The SOLAP concept is also described and a comparison is made with traditional GIS applications.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Research in Geomatics, Université Laval, Québec, G1K 7P4, Pavillon Casault, Canada. yvan.bedard@scg.ulaval.ca
authors.forename: Yvan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bédard
authors.forename: Pierre
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gosselin
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Rivest
authors.forename: Marie-Josée
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Proulx
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nadeau
authors.forename: Germain
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Lebel
authors.forename: Marie-France
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Gagnon
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D002170:Canada; D003625:Data Collection; D004782:Environmental Health; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D012984:Software; D018511:Systems Integration; D014584:User-Computer Interface