• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.1225-1239
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• 2016

We investigate pediatric tumor incidence data collected by the Florida Association for Pediatric Tumor program using various models commonly used in disease mapping analysis. Particularly, we consider Poisson normal models with various conditional autoregressive structure for spatial dependence, a zero-in ated component to capture excess zero counts and a spatio-temporal model to capture spatial and temporal dependence, together. We found that intrinsic conditional autoregressive model provides the smallest Deviance Information Criterion (DIC) among the models when only spatial dependence is considered. On the other hand, adding an autoregressive structure over time decreases DIC over the model without time dependence component. We adopt weighted ranks squared error loss to identify high risk regions which provides similar results with other researchers who have worked on the same data set (e.g. Zhang et al., 2014; Wang and Rodriguez, 2014). Our results, thus, provide additional statistical support on those identied high risk regions discovered by the other researchers.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.361-367
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• 2016

We have reported a high prevalence of breast cancer in light-polluted areas in Korea. However, it is necessary to analyze the spatial effects of light polluted areas on breast cancer because light pollution levels are correlated with region proximity to central urbanized areas in studied cities. In this study, we applied a spatial regression method (an intrinsic conditional autoregressive [iCAR] model) to analyze the relationship between the incidence of breast cancer and artificial light at night (ALAN) levels in 25 regions including central city, urbanized, and rural areas. By Poisson regression analysis, there was a significant correlation between ALAN, alcohol consumption rates, and the incidence of breast cancer. We also found significant spatial effects between ALAN and the incidence of breast cancer, with an increase in the deviance information criterion (DIC) from 374.3 to 348.6 and an increase in $R^2$ from 0.574 to 0.667. Therefore, spatial analysis (an iCAR model) is more appropriate for assessing ALAN effects on breast cancer. To our knowledge, this study is the first to show spatial effects of light pollution on breast cancer, despite the limitations of an ecological study. We suggest that a decrease in ALAN could reduce breast cancer more than expected because of spatial effects.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.138-150
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to examine the regional disparity of ambulatory health care utilization considering spatio-temporal variation in South Korea during 1996-2008(precisely, in 1996, 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008) using bayesian hierarchial spatio-temporal model. The spatial pattern uses an intrinsic gaussian conditional autoregressive (CAR) error component. Ornstein-Uhlenbeck method was applied to detect the temporal patterns. The results showed that substantial temporal-geographical variation depending on diseases exists in Korea. On the Contrary to the pattern of total outpatient utilizations, for example, the areas that chronic diseases distributed relatively high were most in rural where the proportion of elderly population was higher than in the urban. Chungcheongnam-do, Junlabuk-do, and Kyeongsangbuk-do had higher risks in hypertension, whereas arthritis was higher risk in the Kyeonggi-do, Chungcheongbuk-do, Junlanam-do, and Junlabuk-do. The results of this study suggested that the effective health intervention programmes needed to alleviate the regional variation of health care utilization. These outcomes also provided the foundation for further investigation of risk factors and interventions in these high-risk areas.