title: Developing a WebGIS for Geo-Visualization of Cancer.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Considering the hygiene facilities and sharing the data of diseases, considerable attempts to promote the public awareness have been made by various media; however, most of the provided information is based on numerical and verbal statistics, and may not provide suitable understanding for people in regard with the situation of diseases.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The main aim of this study is to design an interactive WebGIS system in which people could simply produce and observe their favorite maps of different cancers and environmental parameters. They can use this tools to produce their personalized maps and explore various aspects of the cancer.
  
  
  METHODS
  A system has been developed by using WebGIS for convenience of ordinary users without any knowledge about geospatial information system (GIS) to observe the situation of the diseases and environmental conditions in terms of static and user-produced interactive maps. It has also provided the possibility of spatial comparison of the arbitrary parameters in the framework of bar and pie diagrams. This system has been designed and launched on cancer database of Iran where information of meteorological stations has been embedded as environmental parameters.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The innovative idea in this study has received less attention in previous works including possibility of producing web-based Choropleth map so that users could easily select the parameters and algorithms for classification and interactive coloring in the system to produce their personalized maps.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Development of WebGIS tools and increased cooperation of people in terms of inserting the spatial labels on the map to report a disease or using their views about reasons of occurring a specific cancer in a specific region may cause turning the process of mono-direction flow of information to users to a bi-directional flow of information. As a result, cancer specialists could use the knowledge of local people and residents of different regions of the country to better analyze the situation of various kinds of cancers.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Mostafa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Khoshabi
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering, Center of Excellence in Geospatial Information Technology, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Taleai
authors.affiliation: Imam Hossein Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran; Cancer Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran; Cancer Office, Ministry of Health, Tehran, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Motlagh
authors.affiliation: Radiation Oncology Department, Imam Hossein Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, IR Iran.
authors.forename: Farnaz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hosseini Kamal
keywords: Cancer; Choropleth Map; Visualization; WebGIS