Abstract. The aim of this study was to use geographical information systems to demonstrate the Dengue fever (DF) risk on a monthly basis in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with the purpose to provide documentation serving to improve surveillance and monitor the Aedes aegypti mosquito vector. Getis-Ord Gi* statistics and a frequency index covering a five-year period (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) were used to map DF and model the risk spatio-temporally. The results show that monthly hotspots were mainly concentrated in central Jeddah districts and that the pattern changes considerably with time. For example, on a yearly basis, for the month of January, the Burman district was identified as a low risk area in 2006, a high-risk area in 2007, medium risk in 2008, very low risk in 2009 and low risk in 2010. The results demonstrate that it would be useful to follow the monthly DF pattern, based on the average weekly frequency, as this can facilitate the allocation of resources for the treatment of the disease, preventing its prevalence and monitoring its vector.
The spatial fairness of public services is a major aspect in offering a healthy and cheerful living environment in a city. The Geographic Information System (GIS) technology has been applied to investigate the spatial distribution of some selected public services over the municipal election areas within Makkah city, Saudi Arabia. These services include education, health, security, religious, commercial, and sports services. The attained results show that except for religious services, other public services are not quantitatively proportional with the population variations in Makkah. It has been found that the third election area posses almost one third of five public services and two thirds of the sport services. That might be attributed to the fact that the third election area possesses almost a quarter of the city population. But, although the first election area has a closer percentage of the total population, it does not include a comparable percentage of public services. On a spatial basis, results of GIS spatial analysis (particularly the Euclidian distance, the mean distance band to a neighbor, the standard distance, the directional distribution ellipse, and the average nearest neighbor ratio tools) have concluded that there is inequity in the services distribution over municipal election areas in Makkah city. Consequently, it is recommended that local planners and decision makers should take the obtained results into consideration to achieve fair and better distribution of public services in the city.
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