Title: Data quality issues in the GIS modelling of air pollution and cardiovascular mortality in Bangalore

Authors: Anitha K. Chinnaswamy; Hewa Balisane; Quynh T. Nguyen; Raouf N.G. Naguib; Nigel Trodd; Ian M. Marshall; Norlaily Yaacob; Gil Nonato Santos; Edgar A. Vallar; Maria Cecilia D. Galvez; Mohyi H. Shaker; Nilmini Wickramasinghe; Tuan Nghia Ton

Addresses: Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Coventry University, UK ' Faculty of Science, Soran University, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq ' Faculty of Science, Soran University, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq; BIOCORE Research and Consultancy International, UK ' Faculty of Science, Soran University, Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq; BIOCORE Research and Consultancy International, UK ' Faculty of Business, Environment and Society, Coventry University, UK ' Coventry University Priory Street Coventry CV1 5FB UK ' Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Coventry University, UK ' Department of Physics, De La Salle University, Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippines ' Department of Physics, De La Salle University, Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippines ' Physics Department, De La Salle University, Philippines ' Ecology and Environment, Inc., USA ' Epworth HealthCare, Deakin University, Australia ' Environmental Health Unit, World Health Organization Representative Office, Vietnam

Abstract: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the world's number one cause of mortality. Research in recent years has begun to illustrate a significant association between CVD and air pollution. As most of these studies employed traditional statistics, cross-sectional or meta-analysis methods, a study undertaken by the authors was designed to investigate how a geographical information system (GIS) could be used to develop a more efficient spatio-temporal method of analysis than the currently existing methods mainly based on statistical inference. Using Bangalore, India, as a case study, demographic, environmental and CVD mortality data was sought from the city. However, critical deficiencies in the quality of the environmental data and mortality records were identified and quantified. This paper discusses the shortcomings in the quality of mortality data, together with the development of a framework based on WHO guidelines to improve the defects, henceforth considerably improving data quality.

Keywords: data quality; information quality; air pollution; cardiovascular disease; cardiovascular mortality; Bangalore; India; geographical information systems; GIS; demographics; mortality data.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIQ.2015.071690

International Journal of Information Quality, 2015 Vol.4 No.1, pp.64 - 81

Received: 18 Feb 2015
Accepted: 30 May 2015

Published online: 14 Sep 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article