ABSTRACT
An enabling technology is an instrument or technique that leads to an increased understanding of the natural world. Analogies have been drawn between GIS and enabling technologies that preceded fundamental scientific breakthroughs such as the optical microscope, the telescope and the electron microscope. In the 1600s Leeuwenhoek’s water drop lens afforded the first images of bacteria (Dobel, 1960), leading, eventually, to a revolution in our understanding and treatment of infectious diseases. For environmental epidemiologists the promise of GIS is an increased understanding of links and perhaps causative relationships between environmental exposures and human health. But is this vision reasonable and attainable? This chapter explores this question by placing GIS within the context of a systematic approach to hypothesis generation and testing.
