The Causes of Death in the Province of Rome Between 1981 and 2007: A Geographical Analysis

Abstract

ABSTRACT. In this paper we provide an overview of the main causes of death in the province of Rome in 1981 and, showing the most relevant variations which have been recorded over time. Using ArcGIS 9.2 software, we have drawn up several medical-geographical thematic maps and specific land use maps which corroborate the temporal and spatial analysis, and which provide suggestions about the relation between causes of death and certain risk factors. Particular attention is given to the diseases of the circulatory system and neoplasms which caused, respectively, 38.4% and 32.6% of deaths in 2007 and which followed substantially different trends. Then, we focus on the city of Rome, where we examine the evolution of land use between 1980 and 2001 in order to investigate, by means of detailed screening, the changes recorded in a city where, in 2007, 67% of the inhabitants of Rome province lived.

A Time-Series Analysis of Climate Variability in Urban and Agricultural Sites (Rome, Italy)

“…During the first 20 years of the study period, urban expansion was mainly restricted to the inner part of the municipality, followed by peripheral, less compact urbanization. Changes in land-use between 1980 and 2001 show, beside the increment of urban areas, a decrease of extensive agricultural land-use (not irrigated arable land, complex cultivation patterns, sparsely vegetated areas), and the increase of intensive agriculture and forest systems (permanently irrigated arable land, reforestations), as well as semi-natural mixed systems (forests and woodland shrubs) [53]. At the end of the 1990s, about 50% of the municipal area remained cultivated, mainly in peri-urban areas.…”

“…By computation on cumulated rainfalls over a given time horizon, the SPI is a convenient tool for monitoring meteorological drought, whose assessment is traditionally based on precipitation data. It gives a flexible method to assess drought at a different scale [52,53] extending from near normal (−0.99) to extreme drought conditions (≤−2.0) [54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. SPI values greater than 2 indicate extremely wet conditions, while those less than −2 indicate extreme drought conditions.…”