Current data and trends in morbidity and mortality for the sub-Saharan Region as presented in this new edition reflect the heavy toll that HIV/AIDS has had on health indicators, leading to either a stalling or reversal of the gains made, not just for communicable disorders, but for cancers, as well as mental and neurological disorders.

This book provides a fresh analysis of the demography, health and well-being of a major African city. It brings a range of disciplinary approaches to bear on the pressing topics of urban poverty, urban health inequalities and urban growth. The approach is primarily spatial and includes the integration of environmental information from satellites and other geospatial sources with social science and health survey data. The authors Ghanaians and outsiders, have worked to understand the urban dynamics in this burgeoning West African metropolis, with an emphasis on urban disparities in health and living standards. Few cities in the global South have been examined from so many different perspectives. Our analysis employs a wide range of GIScience methods, including analysis of remotely sensed imagery and spatial statistical analysis, applied to a wide range of data, including census, survey and health clinic data, all of which are supplemented by field work, including systematic social observation, focus groups, and key informant interviews. This book aims to explain and highlight the mix of methods, and the important findings that have been emerging from this research, with the goal of providing guidance and inspiration for others doing similar work in cities of other developing nations.

This book describes how powerful computing technology, emerging big and open data sources, and theoretical perspectives on spatial synthesis have revolutionized the way in which we investigate social sciences and humanities. It summarizes the principles and applications of human-centered computing and spatial social science and humanities research, thereby providing fundamental information that will help shape future research. The book illustrates how big spatiotemporal socioeconomic data facilitate the modelling of individuals’ economic behavior in space and time and how the outcomes of such models can reveal information about economic trends across spatial scales. It describes how spatial social science and humanities research has shifted from a data-scarce to a data-rich environment. The chapters also describe how a powerful analytical framework for identifying space-time research gaps and frontiers is fundamental to comparative study of spatiotemporal phenomena, and how research topics have evolved from structure and function to dynamic and predictive. As such this book provides an interesting read for researchers, students and all those interested in computational and spatial social sciences and humanities.

In 1950, there were only 152 urban agglomerations in West Africa. Since then, the number of agglomerations has increased to almost 2 000 town and cities which are home to 41% of the region’s total population.

Boots and Getis provide a concise explanation of point pattern analysis - a series of techniques for identifying patterns of clustering or regularity in a set of geographical locations. They discuss quadrat and distance methods of measurement, and consider the problems associated with these methods. The authors also outline and compare other measures of arrangement, suggesting when these techniques should be used.

Population and Health in Developing Countries: Volume 1. Poulation, health, and survival at INDEPTH sites