Anàlisi estadística espacial i temporal en epidemiologia

Resum

This Ph,D. thesis is presented as a digest of publications. It is composed of seven articles; five of them are devoted to the analysis of spatial processes, whereas the remaining two deal with temporal stochastic processes. The context of all papers is Epidemiology and Public Health. In what follows, the reference and a brief summary are provided for each paper. ¿ J. Ferrándiz, J. J. Abellán, A. López-Quílez, P. Sanmartín, H. Vanaclocha, O. Zurriaga, M. A. Martínez-Beneito, I. Melchor, J. Calabuig. 2002. Geographical distribution of the cardiovascular mortality in Comunidad Valenciana (Spain). En GIS for Emergency Preparedness and Health Risk Reduction editat per D. Briggs, P. Forer, L. Jarup, R. Stern. Dordrecht, Holanda: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Capítol 15. Pàgines 267-282. Summary: Geographical Information Systems have revealed as a powerful tool in many areas. In Epidemiology, they are particularly useful in surveillance tasks via disease mapping since clusters of areas of high risk of disease can be quickly detected. However, it is often necessary querying large databases as well as using statistical methods to estimate risk in the set of units that compose the region of interest. In this chapter we recall the importance of integrating statistical techniques that require heavy computation in Geographical Information Systems. ¿ J. Ferrándiz, A. López-Quílez, V.Gómez-Rubio, P. Sanmartín, M. A. Martínez-Beneito, I. Melchor, H. Vanaclocha, O. Zurriaga, F. Ballester, J. M. Gil, S. Pérez-Hoyos, J. J. Abellán. Statistical relationship between hardness of drinking water and cerebrovascular mortality in Valencia: a comparison of spatiotemporal models. 2002. Environmetrics. 14: 491-510. Summary: The statistical detection of environmental risk factors in Public Health studies is usually difficult due to the weakness of their effects and their confounding with other covariates. Small area geographica