Why GISVET’07?
In September 2001, the first GISVET conference was organised by Peter Durr and Tony Gatrell at Lancaster,
in the northwest of England. The aim of this conference was to provide a forum for people using GIS and
spatial analyses for animal health problems, and was very successful with more than 70 delegates from a variety
of countries. Arising from the conference was a special edition of Preventive Veterinary Medicine,
an edited book on GIS and animal health, and this web site.
Although the GISVET conference was planned as a one-off event, most delegates expressed an interest in holding a second one.
The challenge of organising this was taken up by Wayne Martin of the Ontario Veterinary College, Rowland Tinline of Queens
University and Bruce McNab of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, and was held in June 2004. This too was very successful,
in part due to the incorporation of a special theme into the program on wildlife disease, which thereby attracted the participation of
a number of ecologists. Besides a second special edition of Preventive Veterinary Medicine
containing the senior research papers, an edited proceedings collating the regular conference papers was produced, and all the
presentations were made available on this web site.
GISVET’07 will have the same aim of the original conference - to popularise the use of GIS and spatial analysis in animal health -
but will aim for a focus on zoonotic disease. The epidemic of H5N1 avian influenza in Asia has reawaken the attention of national
and international health authorities to the importance of zoonosis, and GIS has been an indispensable tool in detecting clusters
of the disease and in mapping the spread of the epidemic. A zoonotic theme is also appropriate for a conference held in Scandinavia,
as the Nordic countries have been at the forefront in the use of advanced epidemiological methods to tackle foodborne zoonosis,
especially campylobacter and salmonellosis.
Notwithstanding the zoonotic theme, the conference will retain its core interest in the use of GIS and spatial analysis for animal
health problems, and thus we anticipate an interesting mix of delegates from a diversity of nations and research interests.
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