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The immediate aftermath of Katrina focused the world's attention on the vulnerability of the urban poor and racial/ethnic minority groups in New Orleans. This vulnerability can be viewed in terms of site, the proximity of a neighborhood to a hazard, and situation, the social context of that neighborhood. Vulnerabilities, associated with demographic characteristics such as being poor, being a member of a racial/ethnic minority group, and being female, will strengthen the force of a disaster. This paper uses a site and situation approach to show how maps of the five main sources of disaster-related stress in New Orleans can be used to predict where counseling resources should be targeted.

BackgroundLithium as a substance occurring naturally in food and drinking water may exert positive effects on mental health. In therapeutic doses, which are more than 100 times higher than natural daily intakes, lithium has been proven to be a mood-stabilizer and suicide preventive. This study examined whether natural lithium content in drinking water is regionally associated with lower suicide rates.MethodsPrevious statistical approaches were challenged by global and local spatial regression models taking spatial autocorrelation as well as non-stationarity into account. A Geographically Weighted Regression model was applied with significant independent variables as indicated by a spatial autoregressive model.ResultsThe association between lithium levels in drinking water and suicide mortality can be confirmed by the global spatial regression model. In addition, the local spatial regression model showed that the association was mainly driven by the eastern parts of Austria.ConclusionsAccording to old anecdotic reports the results of this study support the hypothesis of positive effects of natural lithium intake on mental health. Both, the new methodological approach and the results relevant for health may open new avenues in the collaboration between Geographic Information Science, medicine, and even criminology, such as exploring the spatial association between violent or impulsive crime and lithium content in drinking water.

Abstract. Suicide, the tenth leading cause of death worldwide, is a complex phenomenon. Models aiming to explain the interaction of ambient variables such as socioeconomic factors, lithium content of drinking water and altitude are poorly developed. While controlling for several risk factors, this research bridges two different, but complementary research lines by investigating statistically the relationship on suicide mortality between lithium levels in drinking water in response to altitude above sea level. Besides regression models with main effects, a multiplicative interaction model between lithium and altitude has been developed providing estimates at the district-level for Austria where spatial autocorrelation was accounted for through spatial filtering. The correlation results showed a negative association between lithium levels and altitude. The regression confirmed a negative association of lithium levels and suicide mortality. Altitude was found to be positively associated with suicide mortality. On the other hand, lithium effects on suicide mortality were found to be moderated by altitude. In lower altitude regions the effect turned out to be negatively related to suicide mortality, while lithium had a positive association in high-altitude regions. These results provide evidence for the fact that the relationship between lithium, altitude and suicide rates is more complex than hitherto assumed. Further research on the effects of ambient variables such as low levels of lithium on suicide is needed and particularly the lithium-altitude interaction is worth further investigation to understand possible underlying neurochemical processes.

We examined published maps containing sensitive data, and the protection methods, if any, that were used. We investigated whether the many published warnings about disclosure risk have been effective in reducing privacy risk. During an 8-year period (2005-2012), 19 journals related to GIScience, geography, spatial crime analysis, and health geography were examined. We identified 41 articles that display actual confidential information and 16 articles where confidential information is protected by the use of a geographical mask. During the investigated time frame, the numbers of articles with unmasked confidential data increased, and in total more than 68,000 home addresses were disclosed. One of the more significant findings of this study is that efforts to instill sensitivity to location privacy and disclosure risk have been relatively unsuccessful.