Journals for GIS in Urban and Health Research

A list of journals relevant to my research in: GIS , Urban, Health and Social.

IF = impact factor. WL = word limit. Open Access journals in bold.

GIS & Health
International Journal of Health Geographics IF: 2.03
Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology

GIS & Spatial Analysis
Computers and Geosciences IF: 1.188; 5yr IF: 1.442; WL: 5,000 – 6,000 words
Computers, Environment and Urban Systems IF: 1.025
Geographical Analysis IF: 2.564
International Journal of Geographical Information Science 2008 IF: 1.596; 5yr IF: 2.293; WL: 6,000 words
Journal of Geographical Systems
Journal of Location Based Services
Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences
Transactions in GIS

Cartography
Cartographica
Geocarto International

Urban / Built Environment / Planning
Cities IF: 0.574; 5yr IF: 0.939
City, Culture and Society
Journal of Urban Affairs IF: 1.271
Journal of Urban Design WL: 9,000 words
Journal of Urban Technology 2008 IF: 0.297; WL: 5,000-8,000 words
Journal of Urbanism WL: 8,000 words
Progress in Planning IF: 0.312; 5yr IF: 0.491
Urban Policy and Research WL: 8,000 words
Urban Research & Practice WL: 8,000 – 9,000 words
Urban Studies IF: 1.381

Geography
Annals of the Association of American Geographers 2008 IF: 2.679
Antipode IF: 2.506
Applied Geography IF: 1.700; 5yr IF: 1667
Area IF: 1.78
Emotion, Space and Society
Geoforum IF: 1.441; 5yr IF: 2.093
Geographical Research
Geography Compass
GeoJournal
Journal of Regional Science IF: 0.958
Papers in Regional Science IF 1.259
The Geographical Journal IF: 1.638
The New Zealand Geographer IF: 0.667
The Professional Geographer 2008 IF: 1.714; WL: 5,000 words
Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie IF 0.457
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers IF: 3.967

Health
American Journal of Epidemiology IF: 5.454
American Journal of Preventive Medicine IF: 3.766; WL: 3,000 – 4,000 words
Annals of Epidemiology IF: 2.621; WL: 2,000 – 3,000 words
British Medical Journal IF: 12.827
BMC Public Health IF: 2.03
EcoHealth
Emerging Themes in Epidemiology IF: 1.63
Environmental Health IF: 2.48
Epidemiologic Perspectives & Innovations IF: 1.54
Health & Place IF: 2.818; 5yr IF: 2.738
Health Policy IF: 1.334
International Journal of Behvioral Nutrition and Physical Activity IF: 2.32
International Journal of Epidemiology IF: 5.838
Journal of Community Health
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health IF: 3.186
Journal of Public Health
Journal of Urban Health
Population Health Metrics: IF: 2.25
Public Health IF: 1.204
Social Science & Medicine IF: 2.604; 5yr IF: 3.588

Transport
Journal of Transport Geography IF: 1.271
Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice IF: 1.832; 5yr IF: 2.384
Transportation Research Part B: Methodological IF: 1.874; 5yr IF: 2.593
Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies IF: 1.082; 5yr IF: 1.878
Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment IF: 1.118; 5yr IF: 1.447

Sustainability
International Journal of Urban Sustainable Development WL:7,000-10,000 words

Community mapping examples

I recently gave a talk about community mapping at a Living Streets Aotearoa meeting. This post contains the examples of community mapping that I mentioned in the talk. All these examples all fall within my general area of research, i.e. social health and wellbeing, and almost all of these examples use google maps.

Note: By "community mapping" I mean maps made by the community. There are other things it might possible be called or related to: neogeography, participatory mapping, volunteered geographic information, collaborative mapping etc. I didn't have time to figure out the appropriate name.

Example 1: Mapping the location of fruit and urban edibles

• City Fruit (Seattle)


• Bloomington Urban Harvest


• Fernwood Fruit Tree Project


• Fitzroy Feral Fruit Map


• New Zealand Fruit and Food Share Map

Example 2: Bicycle routes

• MapMyRide


• Bikely


• Ride the City - safe bike routes in NYC,. This is more a map for the community than a map by the community, but I thought it was interesting

Example 3: Walkability & Cycleability audits

• Woodbridge Township Safe Routes to School project - schools & community participate in walkability audits to figure out safe routes to school.

Example 4 - Mapping perceptions of the environment

• Rescue Geography's Eastside project - not all these are collaborative, but there are interesting google earth and google maps that include stories, quotes, photos, video and ambinet sounds of the city. There is also an interesting cycling perceptions project underway.

Vipers and Vampires: Measuring Oil Vulnerability

Had a very interesting visitor yesterday: Jago Dodson from the Urban Research Program at Griffith University in Australia. Jago has published research on measurement of Oil Vulnerability in Australian cities eg:

Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City: Assessing Socioeconomic Risks from Higher Urban Fuel Prices (Dodson and Sipe, 2007)
Shocking the Suburbs: Urban Location, Housing Debt and Oil Vulnerability in the Australian City (Dodson and Sipe, 2006)

Oil vulnerability is measured by combining various census variables (mode of transport to work, number of cars in a household) and socioeconomic data (SEIFA) to produce the VIPER (Vulnerability Index for Petrol Expense Rise).

The VAMPIRE (Vulnerability Assessment for Mortgage,Petrol and Inflation Risks and Expenditure) is a measure of oil and mortgage vulnerability and includes mortgage information.

I decided to try this for a NZ city. Here is a quick lo-res attempt at an Auckland VIPER:

[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="VIPER index from 2006 census data. Dark = more vulnerable to oil price increases. Light = less vulnerable."][/caption]

Now I just need to find some mortgage data, cause even though VIPER is a pretty cool name, I love the idea of creating a VAMPIRE index!

Health and The Built Environment Seminar

Yesterday Reid Ewing, a Research Professor at the National Center for Smart Growth, visited SHORE and gave a talk that touched on various aspects of the relationship between the Built Environment and Public Health.

He talked about the sprawl index they developed, which is comprised of: low density, highly segregated land use, lack of centering, and poor street connectivity. Low accessibility is also a characteristic of sprawl.

Sprawl has been linked to outcomes like: increased VMT (Vehicle Miles Traveled), worse air quality, climate change, and traffic safety.

Climate change and traffic safety were new ideas things for me.

Reid also mentioned the 6 "D" variables that influence travel at the meso and micro scale: Density, Diversity, Design, Demographics, Distance to transit, and Destination accessibility.

Some of those D's are relatively straightforward. Design is more complicated to measure but the key point is that "human scale" design is good.

A very interesting comment that Reid made was that Destination accessibility is the most important variable in terms of VMT. This relates to the CO2 project ie my model which measures change in accessibility under different transport scenarios.

when I am lonely the mountains call me

What a cool paper name! How could I resist tracking down and reading an article entitled "When I am Lonely the Mountains Call Me": The Impact of Sacred Geography on Navajo Psychological Well Being?

I came across it while googling "wellbeing" and "geography." And it took quite a long time to find an electronic version of the paper, which is very unusual. Most things are at the tips of my fingers and available within seconds. But this took around 45 minutes to track down. Of course I was also multitasking and doing other things at the same time.

Anyway. You can find the pdf here at the National Center for American Indian and Alaska Native Mental Health Research.

As a result of the difficulty in tracking down this somewhat obscure article I have started a list of journal links. I think I will only add the obscure and less easy to find instantly journals though.

And no I haven't read the article yet, but I think it's about homesickness...