This SBIR project will develop software for geographic boundary analysis that will aid considerably in the evaluation of spatial relationships between oncogenes, the environment, and cancer. Geographic bounderies are defined as the edges of homogeneous areas or as zones of rapid change in a variable, and are of fundamental scientific interest in fields such as population genetics, environmental health, exposure assessment, and cancer mapping. Examples include the edges of areas such as health, water, school and political districts; geographic features such as rivers and roads; zones of rapid change in the environment such as ecotones and the edges of pollution plumes; and zones of rapid change in health outcomes such as cancer mortality rates. While geographic boundary analysis is a proven and widely applied technique, commercially available software does not exist. This phase I project addressess this need and will pursue three objectives: (1) Program the boundary analysis software package for Windows; (2) Write the User Manual; (3) Evaluate project feasibility In phase II the software from Phase I will be the platform for further assessing statistical power, conducting applied studies and for developing novel fuzzy boundary overlap statistics.
While boundaries are of inherent theoretical and practical interest in many fields, boundary analysis software is not commercially available. The proposed software will provide a powerful diagnostic tool in the analysis of mapped data describing relationships between health and the environment.
