BACKGROUND Primary health care is essential in improving and maintaining the health of populations. It has the potential to accelerate achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and fulfill the "Health for All" doctrine of the Alma-Ata Declaration. Understanding the performance of the health system from a geographic perspective is important for improved health planning and evidence-based p...

MEP (Maps for Easy Paths) is a project for the enrichment of geographical maps with information about accessibility of urban pedestrian pathways, targeted at people with mobility problems. In this paper, we describe the tools developed to collect data along the paths travelled by target people and the algorithms for a good quality reconstruction of the path developed to overcome the intrinsic l...

Ecological variables often fluctuate synchronously over wide geographical areas, a phenomenon known as spatial autocorrelation or spatial synchrony. Development of statistical approaches designed to test for spatial autocorrelation combined with the increasing accessibility of long-term, large-scale ecological datasets are now making it possible to document the patterns and understand the cause...

Understanding inference–evidence relationships in recognition tasks is fundamental for developing methods utilizing Artificial Intelligence. Recognition of geographical phenomena in wide areas from remote sensing images is a most complex due to its high dimensionality (spectral, temporal, spatial). The objectivity, consistency and accessibility of remote sensing data make it a good case study f...

Accessibility represents a key element in strengthening developed regions terms of investment transportation infrastructure. is also an equity indicator to measure the ease with which specific location achieves desired outcomes as well spillover effect; traditionally, these effects have been analyzed econometric and engineering techniques, rather than from perspective geographical studies. The ...

Metadata is the important information describing geographical data resources and their key elements. It is used to guarantee the availability and accessibility of the data. ISO 19115 is a metadata standard for geographical information, making the geographical metadata shareable, retrievable, and understandable at the global level. In order to cope with the massive, high-dimensional and high-div...

BACKGROUND Physical activity is considered as a major component of a healthy lifestyle. However, few studies have examined the relationships between the spatial accessibility to sport facilities and sport practice with a sufficient degree of specificity. The aim of this study was to investigate the associations between the spatial accessibility to specific types of sports facilities and the pra...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether neighbourhood measures of geographical accessibility to outlets selling tobacco (supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol stations) are associated with individual smoking behaviour in New Zealand. METHODS Using geographical information systems, travel times from the population-weighted centroid of each neighbourhood to the closest outlet selling tobacco wer...

BACKGROUND Geographical variation in health care services challenges the basic principle of fair allocation of health care resources. This study aimed to investigate geographical variation in the use of X-ray, CT, MRI and Ultrasound examinations in Norway, the contribution from public and private institutions, and the impact of accessibility and socioeconomic factors on variation in examination...