Iryna Makovska (NUBiP of Ukraine) and Marco De Nardi (SAFOSO, Switzerland) held a joint workshop “Introduction to GIS and the basics of spatial analysis”

    From 25 to 27 February 2020, the workshop “Introduction to GIS and the basics of spatial analysis” was held at the office of Black and Veatch company (Kyiv, Okhtyrsky lane, 7). The workshop was conducted with the assistance of Marco De Nardi (SAFOSO, Switzerland) and Iryna Makovska (NUBiP of Ukraine). The participants got acquainted with the principles of Spatio-temporal epizootic analysis and the application of modern GIS-analysis methods in practical application of QGIS.

   Test spatial data were provided by the administrator of the system of mutual information for the participants of the UP-10 project, Associate Professor of the Department of Epizootology and Veterinary Business Organization, Volodymyr Polishchuk.

    For three days, representatives from various scientific institutions of Ukraine persistently solved the complex tasks of developing QGIS software and conducting GIS analysis using technologies of visualization of test cases in the format of point and aggregate data; extrapolation (determination of kernel smoothing depending on the density of cases), clustering (detection of clusters of diseases depending on time and space by statistical modelling methods) and finding ellipses of standard deviation.

   The training was based on spatial analysis of morbidity and evaluation of methods of interpretation of events. The participants mastered the methods of spatial-temporal analysis, learned to determine the degree of disease prevalence, taking into account the component of the territory and standard distance between cases of the disease, to calculate the radius of disease spread, to determine the directions of disease, to detect the density of diseases, to work with scan windows and to define statistically-significant sampling sites, creating disease spread maps, and most importantly, to analyze patterns of disease spread among population and factors, influencing this process.

    In the future, it is planned to expand the range of spatial analysis training by involving epizootologists and infectionists in GIS analysis, which will increase the reliability of the assessment of the risks of infectious and invasive animal diseases.
     More detailed information and training materials of the seminar are available at: http://www.up10.vet.ua/index.php/purpose-project/324-introduction-to-gis-and-the-basics-of-spatial-analysis

Vitaliy Nedosekov