Chris Grundy MSc

Lecturer in Geographical Information Systems

My background is in civil engineering and I came to the School in 1993 after gaining an MSc in geographical information systems (GIS). Since then I have been responsible for exploring ways GIS can be used in health research.

Affiliation

Teaching

I am responsible for the GIS teaching at LSHTM. This includes teaching in the MSc program, short courses and longer term training programs. The majority of my teaching revolves around a 2 day introduction to GIS short course which is run at various points through the year and can also be held externally. I also work with groups over longer periods to explore and develop the way GIS is used in their work.

Research

 

Since starting at LSH&TM I have worked in many aspects public health research including: clustering of diseases around industrial sites, air pollution and asthma, infant mortality, access to services, exercise and health, road injury, use of GIS by NGOs, outbreak investigation, monitoring and evaluation, vector borne disease and population estimation.

 

My interest is in how GIS can be used in novel ways in public health, particularly its use in disease surveillance, public health interventions, and in the communication of public health messages. I also have an increasing interest in the methodology around data collection and dissemination and expect to be doing more work in this field in the future.

 

My main area of research currently is the use of remote imagery in population estimation.  Images take from satellites, planes and drones are now amazingly detailed and show almost every feature in the location, including individual structures.  My research looks at how we can use these images to estimate populations reducing the need to carry out difficult and expensive ground surveys. The first study looking at the use of very high resolution satellite imagery showed that in locations where structures are simple and there is little tree cover population estimates using this method are good, (less than 10% different than a traditional survey) although there were major limitations in areas with trees, cloud cover and more complex structures. This work was published in International Journal of Health Geographics. Following on from this initial study I worked with MSF to look at field testing the method in an area of interest, Am Timan in Chad.  The results from this work are currently being written up. Ongoing work includes producing a field guide for use of this method by NGOs, designing a quick and simple survey technique to get a population per structure estimation, looking at the use of the cloud and crowd sourcing for population estimation and the use of other sensors such as readily available drones to allow field teams to collect their own images.

 

I am also working on the use of GIS by NGOs and local organisation in developing countries. Looking at how NGOs can use GIS in their routine work and how open source GIS software may help health professionals in their work. This involves training on use of the software and looking at how to integrate GIS into the organisation. Lately a lot of work has revolved around the use of GIS in management and evaluation.

 

An ongoing field of work is in Transport and Health with several projects in this field, the best know being the effect 20mph zones have on road injury in London published in the BMJ in 2009. Currently I am working on a project looking at the effect of street lighting reduction schemes on crime and road injury in the UK, funded by NIHR.

 

There are also a few projects remaining on access to services: looking at access to services has been part of my research since starting at LSHTM in 1993. Recent research has included looking at how the methods used in developed countries for the last decade can be applied in the developing world and comparing methods or calculating access to services. Projects involve looking at access to maternal health services in Ghana and Ethiopia.

 

Research areas

  • Complex interventions
  • Environment
  • Health inequalities
  • Sexual health
  • Surveillance

Disciplines

  • GIS/Spatial analysis

Disease and Health Conditions

  • Chronic disease
  • Diarrhoeal diseases
  • Injuries
  • Leishmaniasis

Other interests

  • GIS
  • Population Estimation
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