Spatial analysis in public health domain: an NLP approach

Abstract

Remote sensing products are effectively used as a tool for decision making in various fields, especially in medical research and health care analyses. GIS is particularly well suited in this context because of its spatial analysis and display capabilities. The integration of RS techniques in public health has been categorised as continuous and discrete strategies where latter is preferred. We have investigated the integration of these approaches through linguistic interpretation of images. In this paper, we propose a framework for direct natural language interpretation of satellite images using probabilistic grammar rules in conjunction with evolutionary computing techniques. Spectral and spatial information has been dynamically combined using adaptive kernel strategy for effective representation of the contextual knowledge. The developed methodology has been evaluated in different querying contexts and investigations revealed that considerable success has been achieved with the procedure. The methodology has also demonstrated to be effective in intelligent interpolation, automatic interpretation as well as attribute, topology, proximity, and semantic analyses.