Mapping water and health: current applications and future developments

From elementary, illustrative description, medical cartography developed into a tool for analytical research already 150 years ago. Water has always played an outstanding role for health mapping. Temporal aspects and the perception of the interaction of multidimensional drivers necessarily pushed mapping of water and health forward into the field of spatial statistics. In recent decades, both the availability of computer processing capacity and an abundance of data becoming available from different sensors triggered the development of powerful Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This is especially the case when a ubiquitous element like water, which affects health in manifold ways, is the focus of interest. This opens up challenging demands and exciting tasks for experts, but may also include obstacles for less developed countries, where people are suffering from water-related health problems on an everyday basis. This paper provides a short review of the current state of the art and illustrates the utilisation and perspectives of GIS for water-related health research.

► Water has always played an outstanding role for health cartography. ► Geographic information systems allow for matching of multidimensional data sources and geostatistical methods and are far beyond simple illustrative description. ► Current applications of digital mapping and GIS cover a broad variety of issues in the field of water and health. ► Complex environmental requests about water and health gain explanations which are not available from any other technique than GIS. ► The review provides a list of sources for data and modelling software tools available online.