Speaker Bio

Dr. Jinfeng Wang (wangjf@Lreis.ac.cn) is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System (LREIS), under the Institute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He specializes in GIS, Spatial statistics, and their applications in public health. He has published 18 books and Atlas in English or Chinese, and 180 papers in international major journals. More information about Dr. Wang can be found in www.geodetector.cn and Google Scholar.

Abstract

Spatial stratified heterogeneity (SSH), referring to the within-strata variance being less than the between strata-variance, is ubiquitous in nature, exampled by many ecological and socioeconomic systems, which may be reflected in spatial distributions of diseases. Particularly, SSH in population causes statistical confounding and is the source of sample bias when not all strata are sampled. SSH is informative in inferring determinants of diseases, especially when spatial autocorrelation is absent and no information about covariates is available. Dr. Wang developed a q statistic to measure SSH and to associate diseases to environmental factors based on SSH. Based on SSH, he developed a so-called Sandwich mapping model, and implemented it with the GeoDetector software tool. Dr. Wang will present how GeoDetector was applied to the recently finished China Atlas of Cancers.