Presenters' Abstracts

Nina Lam

Reducing Uncertainties in Health Risk Assessment through GIS and Spatial Analysis

As in many complex studies involving disparate data and methods, environmental health risk assessment research is prone to error and uncertainties. Uncertainties can never be eliminated but can be reduced; hence effective approaches designed to reduce uncertainties are needed. This presentation summarizes the major sources of uncertainties in environmental health risk assessment, and illustrates the use of a spatial analytical framework that links to a geographic information system (GIS) to provide strategic evaluation and reduce uncertainties in the assessment results. The framework should contain at least four groups of functions, including visualization and measurement, cluster detection, scale analysis, and focused exposure modeling. Challenges and future research on the use of GIS for environmental and public health studies are discussed.