LionVu: A Data-Driven Geographical Web-GIS Tool for Community Health and Decision-Making in a Catchment Area

In 2018, the Penn State Cancer Institute developed LionVu, a web mapping tool to educate and inform community health professionals about the cancer burden in Pennsylvania and its catchment area of 28 counties in central Pennsylvania. LionVu, redesigned in 2023, uses several open-source JavaScript li...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGeographies Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 286 - 302
Main Authors Geyer, Nathaniel R., Lengerich, Eugene J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published MDPI AG 01.06.2023
Subjects
big data
cancer
GIS
Leaflet
QGIS
web-based GIS
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Summary:In 2018, the Penn State Cancer Institute developed LionVu, a web mapping tool to educate and inform community health professionals about the cancer burden in Pennsylvania and its catchment area of 28 counties in central Pennsylvania. LionVu, redesigned in 2023, uses several open-source JavaScript libraries (i.e., Leaflet, jQuery, Chroma, Geostats, DataTables, and ApexChart) to allow public health researchers the ability to map, download, and chart 21 publicly available datasets for clinical, educational, and epidemiological audiences. County and census tract data used in choropleth maps were all downloaded from the sources website and linked to Pennsylvania and catchment area county and census tract geographies, using a QGIS plugin and Leaflet JavaScript. Two LionVu demonstrations are presented, and 10 other public health related web-GIS applications are reviewed. LionVu fills a role in the public health community by allowing clinical, educational, and epidemiological audiences the ability to visualize and utilize health data at various levels of aggregation and geographical scales (i.e., county, or census tracts). Also, LionVu is a novel application that can translate and can be used, for mapping and graphing purposes. A dialog to demonstrate the potential value of web-based GIS to a wider audience, in the public health research community, is needed.
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Author Contributions: Conceptualization, E.J.L. and N.R.G.; Methodology, N.R.G.; Formal Analysis, N.R.G.; Resources, E.J.L.; Data Curation, N.R.G.; Writing-Original Draft Preparation, N.R.G.; Writing-Review and Editing, E.J.L. and N.R.G.; Validation, N.R.G.; Visualization, N.R.G.; Supervision, E.J.L.; Project Administration, E.J.L.; Funding Acquisition, E.J.L.; Software, N.R.G. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
ISSN:2673-7086
2673-7086
DOI:10.3390/geographies3020015