Integrating GIS components with knowledge discovery technology for environmental health decision support.
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.
Bédard
Yvan
Y
Centre for Research in Geomatics, Université Laval, Québec, G1K 7P4, Pavillon Casault, Canada. yvan.bedard@scg.ulaval.ca
Gosselin
Pierre
P
Rivest
Sonia
S
Proulx
Marie-Josée
MJ
Nadeau
Martin
M
Lebel
Germain
G
Gagnon
Marie-France
MF
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