My Information Needs

Answers to the following questions would be helpful in continuing with my research:
- What is a communicable disease?
- How do these diseases typically spread across a population?
- Examples of different diseases
- Do certain conditions increase the likelihood of disease spread?
- How are commuiting patterns in the US determined?
- How is disease-specific data overlayed with geographic information to produce a model for desease spread?

Prospectus Continued.... Why am I Interested?

I'm not sure if we were supposed to post our reasons for interest in our topic or not. My work has me producing field maps for the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH). I work with GIS staff who take US census data and overlay it with US maps to show populations within certain areas of the country. Eventually field staff use the maps to find houses and perform interviews. This work recently had me attending a GIS workshop where I learned to use an application called ArcGIS along with census data to create my own informative maps. It was very interesting and got me thinking about all of the possible applications where this could be useful. There's a current study on my topic which my company is involved in. So, with my interest and access to professionals in the field I thought it would be a good project.

Prospectus stuff

Ok, so here's my initial prospectus:

How can GIS Help Prevent the Spread of Communicable Diseases?

GIS (Geographic Information System) is a “computer system for capturing, storing, checking, integrating, manipulating, analyzing and displaying data related to positions on the Earth's surface” (www.dictionary.reference.com). GIS typically integrates geography with other raw data to show spatial trends. Multiple “layers” of data are overlaid onto maps to provide a visual picture of the data and show how it is dissimulated into a geographic area. GIS can be an excellent tool for preventing the spread of communicable diseases by pinpointing the location of an outbreak and overlaying data specific to a disease to track the potential geographic area and rate of spread. This information can be used by medical authorities to quarantine specific areas and direct resources to strategic areas in the interest of minimizing the impact of a serious disease.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsors a Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) which involves the GIS department at RTI International. Some of the maps that GIS staff at RTI has created show detailed commuting patterns in the US. This helps us understand where people go and who they interact with and can be used to help predict the potential spread of infectious diseases. Along with my own research I will use GIS staff at RTI as a resource in this project.
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After presenting it to a student and seeing that he really didn't really get what I was trying do I I decided that I better make some changes. So, now I'm thinking of presenting my proposed research more like this:

Can Studying Commuting Patterns in the US Help Prevent the Spread of Communicable Diseases?

Learning how to pinpoint outbreaks and then reduce the spread of communicable diseases is becoming increasingly important in the US with the recent threat of biological terrorist attacks. Spotting and diagnosing an outbreak can be simple for medical authorities. Some tougher questions to answer are "Where might the disease spread next? How many people might it infect in a given period of time? Where should relief efforts be focused?". Finding solid answers to these questions early in an outbreak could significantly reduce the fallout from serious infectious diseases. By studying commuting patterns in the US and using Geographic Information Science (GIS) to create models for predicting the spread of diseases the above questions, and many more, can be answered.