Research at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health doesn't stop in Chapel Hill. Our maps of North Carolina and the world show where School faculty, staff and students make a difference.

Pictured above: This geo-referenced map shows the location of research projects conducted by UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health.

CHAPEL HILL—The University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Global Public Health has impact far beyond the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. From Dare to Swain counties in North Carolina, from Malawi to Malaysia, the school’s reach is worldwide.

Now the school can communicate easily its worldwide impact through Web-based, interactive maps developed by RENCI. The maps, viewable on the public health school’s website, use data on the school’s research projects contained in UNC’s RAMSeS, a comprehensive archive of all UNC funded research projects maintained by the university’s Office of Research Information Systems.

Hong Yi, a senior research software developer at RENCI, migrated SPH data from RAMSeS into a dynamic database housed at RENCI. Using RENCI’s Geoanalytics Framework, Yi linked each research project from RAMSeS to latitudes and longitudes on a map, then merged the geo-referenced database with online mapping tools such as Google Maps. The end result is a Web interface that allows users to click on dots on a map and see information about current, previous, or all public health school projects at that location. When new research projects are added to the RAMSeS database, they automatically are added to the geo-referenced database and can be viewed on the map.

“We are a school with broad local and global reach, and this system  provides a very intuitive way to visualize that reach,” said Christin Minter, director of the  public health school’s Office of Research. Minter said the school will use the tool to explain its impact to prospective students and faculty members and to North Carolina legislators and community leaders. Over time, the visualization tool could be refined, so that users could filter information by project type (water research or cancer-related research, for example) or by a researcher’s name, she said.

Because many UNC schools, colleges, departments and research centers could benefit from a Web-based geo-visualization tool, the framework was developed to be easily adaptable to the needs of other UNC campus units. Given time and resources, RENCI has the capacity to geo-reference and visualize the entire RAMSeS database, said Yi.

RENCI Senior Research Software Developer Jeff Heard developed the Geoanalytics Framework as a flexible infrastructure that can be extended and customized for any project that would benefit from integrating data with a Web-based mapping system. The National Weather Service funded development of the framework as part of a project to incorporate weather and climate information into emergency management decision-making tools.

No store-bought tomatoes can compare with sweet, juicy, still-warm-from-the-sun heirloom varieties found at midsummer farmers’ markets.

Foodie pleasures aside, can consuming locally grown fruits and vegetables and locally raised meat lead to better health and help to combat obesity? Does buying food grown neaby help the local economy by keeping family farms viable as North Carolina transitions away tobacco farming? Does ‘buy local’ equate with ‘go green’ because fewer fossil fuels and pesticides are needed to move food from the fields to the dinner table?

Alice Ammerman and her multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary research team investigate these and other questions through a project funded by the Gillings Innovation Labs at UNC Chapel Hill. Ammerman, a professor of nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health and director of the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at UNC, wants to understand the public health, economic, and environmental impacts of moving toward a local, sustainable food system. Her team involves experts in nutrition, public policy, economics and agriculture at UNC, Duke, NC State and NC A&T as well as software experts at RENCI who developed a tool dubbed the market locator.

The RENCI market locator will use demographic data such as income, population density and the presence of other markets and grocery stores in the area, as well as data on travel times around the area, to pinpoint the best strategic locations for new farmers’ markets.

The current version of the tool calculates a score indicating the income potential for a market located within a specific census block. The tool calculates potential for every census block in North Carolina, which allows the user to compare clocks to determine where markets are likely to succeed to pinpoint existing markets that are under performing.

To determine score, the tool looks at drive-time circles of different radii around the market location, the net income within the drive-time circles and uses a site location model that accounts for competition from other farmers’ markets.

Ammerman’s team and RENCI software developers plan to improve the tool by studying data from farmers’ markets in Washington state to better understand who shops at farmers’ markets (Baby Boomers vs. Gen Xers, for example). By more accurately identifying which area residents are likely to shop at a market, the tool will be better able to choose successful market locations, said Charles Schmitt, director of RENCI’s informatics division.

Above: RENCI’s market locator shows strategic sites for farmers’ markets based on population density and demographics. Researchers are fine-tuning the tool looking at what groups are most likely to shop at the markets.

“You want to know how many people live within driving distance of a given location, but more importantly, you want to know how many of them are likely to shop at a farmers’ market,” said Schmitt. “There could be many factors that come into play, from income to age to education level.”

Putting markets where they are most likely to succeed will give other researchers the chance to study whether markets help the pocketbooks of local farmers, the health of market customers and the environment through its focus on locally grown foods.

For more information see:
Linking local sustainable farming and health
Improving health and economies