From kbyrnes@vdh.state.va.us Fri Sep 7 08:53:17 2001 Received: from mxu102.u.washington.edu (mxu102.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.15]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.11.2+UW01.01/8.11.2+UW01.04) with ESMTP id f87FrF0111880 for ; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:53:15 -0700 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by mxu102.u.washington.edu (8.11.6+UW01.08/8.11.6+UW01.08) with SMTP id f87FrFE06579 for ; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 08:53:15 -0700 Received: FROM vdhsrv20.vdh.state.va.us BY mxu2.u.washington.edu ; Fri Sep 07 08:53:15 2001 -0700 Received: from [169.134.72.1] by vdhsrv20.vdh.state.va.us (NTMail 6.03.0009/NT1764.00.5148df18) with ESMTP id gilwmaaa for waphgis@u.washington.edu; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 11:59:39 -0400 Received: from vdh.state.va.us ([10.51.106.9]) by vdhsrv1.vdh.state.va.us (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA13237 for ; Fri, 7 Sep 2001 12:09:33 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <3B98ED8E.E51EBC71@vdh.state.va.us> Date: Fri, 07 Sep 2001 11:53:50 -0400 From: kbyrnes X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en,pdf MIME-Version: 1.0 To: waphgis@u.washington.edu Subject: Re: I found the listerv archive. GPS question References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Margie: Just a couple of ideas...use of GPS is particularly valuable in rural planning applications in order to build a spatial database of community health care facilities, industrial locations, point source discharges, ground well locations, etc. Without the capability to geocode such locations by street address, GPS becomes the primary means of assigning relatively accurate map coordinates to such locations. With spatial attributes assigned to such data bases, a whole host of public health & safety applications can be supported...e.g. community right-to-know on hazardous chemical storage & use, point source pollution of public water ways, emergency contingency planning (e.g. evacuation of flood-prone areas, group quarter facilities, etc.), spatial analysis of public health inspection reports (e.g. restaurants, ground water wells, etc.), etc. Of course, with spatial attributes in a database, administrative efficiencies might be gained through automated routing of health inspectors. Personally, I think the issue is not the value of learning GPS...but rather the benefit of applying spatial analysis to various public service jobs to improve public health & safety, increase public sector efficiency and better serve the public. GPS is only a means to that end and as described above, really the only practical means in many areas and situations to build a spatial database which empowers the spatial analyst. Kevin Byrnes Virginia Department for the Aging Marjorie Roswell wrote: > I found the listerv archive. > > WAPHGIS archives > http://lists.directionsmag.com/discussion/list.php?f=28 > > Unfortunately, no such file as I remembered (falsely, maybe!) harking the > value of GPS by health GIS professionals. Anyone have a good resource I > could share with my boss as I try to seek approval to pay for the darn > class myself, but not have to use two vacation days? > > _________________________________________________________ > Marjorie Roswell, Spatial Analyst > UMBC Center for Health Program Development and Management > 1000 Hilltop Circle Fx: (410)455-6850 > Baltimore, MD 21250 E: roswell@umbc.edu > Ph: (410)455-6802 http://umbc.edu/~roswell/mipage.html > _________________________________________________________ .