ABSTRACT
During the last two decades, remarkable progress has been made in the development of geographic tools and spatial epidemiological approaches used to evaluate environmental health problems.Advances in cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), statistics and geostatistical modelling, remote sensing (RS), and global positioning systems (GPS) have enabled the timely acquisition and compilation of spatially referenced data on various health events, and the analysis, visualization and presentation of these events relative to socio-demographic and environmental risk factors. The use of these methodologies to address health problems has been part of a well established tradition in medical geography, dating as far back as the 1800s when maps were used in environmental and public health decision making and prioritization of preventive measures.
