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Web-based Mapping Brings Breath of Fresh Air to New Brunswick Lung Association
The New Brunswick Lung Association is a charitable health organization committed to clean air, respiratory health, and lung-disease prevention. The Association works with government, private sector, and community organizations to share ideas, information, and resources about respiratory health.
Thanks to a new web-mapping system based on the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure (CGDI), Lung Association health officials can now better monitor air quality and improve health care for Canadians. GeoConnections contributed $160,000 in funding, technical support, and CGDI expertise to the project. Dozens of other partners were involved as well, including the Canadian Information System for the Environment—Environment Canada, and many contributed the data integral to the application’s success. The application was developed by CARIS Ltd. of Fredericton, New Brunswick.
Harnessing standards and the CGDI
The Lung Association’s web-mapping application owes its existence to GeoConnections’ internationally endorsed data standards. Before GeoConnections promoted these standards, many geographic data sources were incompatible. Trying to create maps from disparate data sources was often like trying to tighten a flat-head screw with a Robertson screwdriver: it could not be done.
But that has all changed. In effect, the CGDI standardized both the screw and the screwdriver. CGDI-endorsed standards now allow data from different sources to be integrated easily and presented on web-based maps. Users no longer have to grapple with outdated paper maps or static tables of data: they can combine data from a host of interoperable sources—all connected by CGDI-endorsed standards—and generate dynamic maps over the Internet.
For instance, by mapping the path and severity of pollutants from a forest fire, health officials can predict whether respiratory-related hospital admissions will increase. With that information, hospitals can better prepare for a potential influx of respiratory patients. Public health officials could also use the system to build health-care facilities where they will best serve the local population. This scenario is but one of many that the Lung Association sees aided by its new web-mapping application.
“Compliance with CGDI data standards is important,” said Eddie Oldfield, director, Climate Change Public Education and Outreach Hub with the New Brunswick Lung Association. “As we integrate more data layers and provide access to more users, we need to make sure that the application works in the wider world of geomatics, and data compliance gives us this compatibility.”
Compliance with CGDI standards is paying dividends: the Lung Association’s application already incorporates over 100 sets of data. “We host data ourselves, but we also connect through the CGDI to other web-mapping services and data,” said Mr. Oldfield. “That’s one of the things the CGDI was built to do. And as more of these data holdings are made available online through web-mapping services, the value of our web-mapping application will increase even more.”
Partners tie together climate, air quality, health, and communities
The Lung Association and other users—health officials, researchers, policy makers, and the public—can now connect to a distributed architecture of data warehouses, web-mapping services, and information systems, all part of the CGDI. This capability provides users with valuable access to spatially referenced data about climate, air quality, health, and communities.
This spatial data is a boon for research, community planning, risk assessment, decision making, and policy development. For instance, the application will answer questions such as, “Where are specialized health care facilities located in relation to patients with chronic respiratory diseases?” or “Is there any correlation between changes in the ozone layer and the incidence of respiratory ailments during the last five years?”
“When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters”
The Lung Association’s slogan—When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters—underscores the organization’s vision to understand not only how air pollution affects the health of New Brunswickers, but also how climate change influences the environment. When the Lung Association heard about web-based mapping, they immediately saw the technology’s potential to help fight against respiratory disease.
“We thought it would be great to map environmental data and health data and better understand the relationships between the two,” said Mr. Kenneth Maybee, president and chief executive officer of the Lung Association. "We also wanted to use web-based mapping under a prevention methodology as both a research tool and a public-information source.”
With the Lung Association web-mapping application at their disposal, New Brunswick communities will be better prepared both to improve air quality and to deal with potential heat waves, forest fires, storm surges, and rising sea levels. In short, the web-mapping application will enable people to understand how the environment affects their well-being and, in turn, to make smarter decisions about their health.
Partners include:
American Lung Association
Bathurst Sustainable Development
Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network
CARIS Ltd.
City of Fredericton
City of Moncton
Community Health Promotion Network Atlantic
Eastern Canada Soil and Water Conservation Centre
Environment Canada-Canadian Information System for the Environment
Environment Canada-Emergency Measures Organization-Public Safety
Falls Brook Centre
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
Learning for a Sustainable Future
Meteorological Service of Canada-Atlantic Region
National Research Council
Natural Resources Canada-GeoConnections
New Brunswick Department of Energy
New Brunswick Department of Health Services
New Brunswick Environment Industry Association
New Brunswick Lung Association
Newfoundland and Labrador Climate Change Centre
Nova Scotia Climate Change Centre
PEI Climate Change Hub
Quebec Lung Association
River Valley Health
Saint John Citizen's Coalition for Clean Air
Science East
Sea-Level Rise Project
Sustainable Development Association
University of Moncton
University of New Brunswick-Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering
University of New Brunswick-Environment and Sustainable Development Research
Centre
University of New Brunswick-Faculty of Computer Science
| GeoConnections is a national partnership initiative to evolve and expand the Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure. |