Abstract

Spatio-Temporal Visualization of individuals Life Time Exposure to UVB
Track: Health and Human Services
Authors: ofer amram, Walter Piovesan, Hellen Tremlett, Nadine Schuurman

Studies have indicated that the development of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is directly correlated to Ultraviolet B radiation (UVB) exposure. This project introduces a method to calculate and visualize UV-B exposure for patients at critical points as well as cumulative exposure over the course of their life history using widely available NASA data, with application to MS. 4011 MS patients with were selected from the University of British Columbia (UBC) MS Clinic's database. The UV data were obtained using the NASA Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) data set. A UV reference table was developed providing a UV value for each location for each year included in the study for each patient. To populate the table, all unique patients' locations in the world were geocoded (approximately 2500 locations). Visualization of space time movement including UV accumulation on a static map was done using ArcScene and the manipulation of geodatabase using ASCII files.