Research in the CHICAS group
Spatio-temporal Statistics and Epidemiology
Spatial Epidemiology focuses on the description and analysis of geographic variations in disease, and relates these to demographic, environmental, behavioural or genetic risk-factors and infectious transmission processes.
Our research covers a range of applications in disease mapping, geographic correlation studies and disease clustering. Development of statistical and geostatistical methodology, used in conjunction with high-resolution spatio-temporally referenced health and environmental quality data, enables a fuller understanding of observed patterns of spatial variation in disease incidence and prevalence.
Spatial statistical modelling is especially useful in developing country settings, where the lack of census or registry data requires the formulation, fitting and validation of stochastic models for spatial interpolation and prediction of disease prevalence.
Current applied projects in this area include short-term forecasting of meningitis epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa (with the Meningitis Environmental Risk Information Technologies consortium), modelling the distribution of Leptospirosis incidence in Brazil (with Fiocruz Research Foundation and Yale University) and mapping Loa loa in equatorial Africa (with the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control).