Jarmo Rusanen

• University of Oulu

This study examines digital story mapping as a pedagogical tool in the in the context of sustainability education with high school students and pre-service teachers. The study focuses on finding out how participants used geomedia as a source of geographic information and in presenting geographic information on story maps, comparing self- and teache...

Neighbourhood socioeconomic status and physical access to amenities and greenness are factors that have been associated with mental, physical and perceived health. However, associations between long-time exposure to these circumstances and changes in perceived health in the middle-age population have remained a relatively underexamined area. This s...

Fluent transitions to higher education are a common concern, especially in highly selective Finnish teacher education (TE). This study examined the fit between the matriculation examination (ME) results and the selection criteria applied in TE. We studied the accepted applicants in Finland in 2013-2015 (n = 5116), and both the accepted and rejected...

in press, KASVATUS 3/2021. Oppimisanalytiikan eettiset kysymykset ovat herättäneet laajaa kiinnostusta viimeaikaisessa tutkimuksessa. On tunnistettu, että eettiset kysymykset sisältävät ristiriitaisuuksia, eivätkä nykyiset ohjeistukset tarjoa riittävästi tukea eettisten kysymysten ratkomiseen eri konteksteissa. Oppimisanalytiikka ja eettiset kysymy...

Background: Recently, the importance of light physical activity (LPA) for health has been emphasized, and residential greenness has been positively linked to the level of LPA and a variety of positive health outcomes. However, people spend less time in green environments because of urbanization and modern sedentary leisure activities. Aims: In t...

Background: In the past two decades, the number of maternity hospitals in Finland has been reduced from 42 to 22. Notwithstanding the benefits of centralization for larger units in terms of increased safety, the closures will inevitably impair geographical accessibility of services. Methods: This study aimed to employ a set of location-allocatio...

Tutkimuksessa kartoitettiin alueellisen liikkuvuuden ja monipaikkaisuuden nykytilaa ja laajuutta eri näkökulmista ja erilaisten aluetyyppien kautta. Erityisesti tarkasteltiin työhön liittyvää sekä yksilöiden, työpaikkojen ja alueiden ominaisuuksia, jotka vaikuttavat liikkuvuuteen ja liikkuvuusmuotovalintoihin. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa selvitettiin jo...

Background Despite the increasing need for STEM skills, to date, the connection between STEM subject choices and their impact on students’ educational pathways has not been widely studied. Focusing on the mathematics choice (basic/advanced/no mathematics), a large register dataset that covered students admitted to Finnish universities during 2013–2...

Vocational education and training (VET) remain overlooked in learning analytics (LA) research. This systematic literature review, using four databases and other sources, was carried out by analyzing selected 60 articles (2012–2017) to study the levels and stages of education that the reviewed LA literature examined. The review indicated that most o...

The aim of this research is to ask what kind of geography is taught in Finnish upper secondary schools and whether this knowledge is powerful knowledge. This is achieved by analysing 11 in-service geography teachers’ concept maps and in-depth interviews with qualitative data analysis. The results indicate the dominance of three terms: spatiality, p...

Background: In general, nature relatedness is positively associated with physical activity, health, and subjective well-being. However, increased residence in urban areas, and the decrease in natural spaces, may affect the younger generation most adversely. The associated environmental changes can increase youths’ risk of spending most of their tim...

Anunti, Henna, Essi Vuopala & Jarmo Rusanen (2018). High school students' experiences of using geomedia in problem-based learning. Terra 130: 1, 17-32. The Finnish national curricula for basic and upper secondary education emphasize stu-dents' ability to understand, analyse and present geographical information by using geo-media. The term "geomed...

A high level of human capital is considered as an essential precondition for economic performance and regional competitiveness. However, university regions do not always manage to take advantage of the full potential of local higher education, as they are not always able to retain university students after graduation. Previous studies have presente...

Consumers and institutional kitchens, as well as traders, have shown increasing interest towards local food. This is particularly due to the transparency and traceability characteristic of a short supply chain and social aspects related to food origins. The trend has been increasingly common during the past decade in Europe and North America, and i...

Little is known about the levels of exposure to grass pollen in urban environments. We assessed the spatio-temporal variation of grass pollen concentrations and the role of urbanity as a determinant of grass pollen exposure in the Helsinki Metropolitan area. We monitored grass pollen concentrations in 2013 at 16 sites during the peak pollen season...

The Helsinki grass pollen data 2013. (XLS)

Long distances and sparse service networks set challenging conditions for material logistics in health care. Globally, health care organisations have been making structural changes towards centralised warehousing and deliveries. In Northern Finland, material logistics of the public health care system rely mainly on numerous separate order and deliv...

The determination of an appropriate catchment area for a hospital providing highly specialized (i.e. tertiary) health care is typically a trade-off between ensuring adequate client volumes and maintaining reasonable accessibility for all potential clients. This may pose considerable challenges, especially in sparsely inhabited regions. In Finland,...

Background: Despite the recent developments in physically- and chemically- based analysis of atmospheric particles, no models exist for resolving the spatial variability of pollen concentration at urban scale. Objectives: We developed land use regression (LUR) approach for predicting spatial fine-scale allergenic pollen concentrations in the Helsin...

Objectives: To study the role of distance in public primary health service use in rural and urban local residential areas (1 km² grids) among the young adults of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (N = 4503). Study design: Cross-sectional study of a cohort born in Northern Finland in 1966. Methods: Use of local health centres was surveyed...

Finnish healthcare services have pressure for reorganisation. Particularly peripheral areas having decreasing and aging populations are challenging for health care, which is indeed evident in Northern Finland. Transport of goods and travels of people form an essential factor in designing effective and reachable health care network. In addition to a...

Background: The incidence of invasive Group A Streptococcus (iGAS) infections varies in time and geographically for unknown reasons. We performed a nation-wide survey to assess the population-based incidence rates and outcomes of children with iGAS infections. Methods: We collected data on patients from hospital discharge registries and the elec...

Tekes Strategic research - Creation of new knowledge and competences in areas of expertise that are expected to be important for businesses in the future.

During past decades, effects of accessibility to growth have been considered extensively. In previ-ous studies, however, matter of scale has been largely ignored. In this study, relevance of travel accessibility and essential socio-economic variables for explaining population change analysed with a multi-scalar study setting by the case of Finland....

The effect of urban sprawl on body weight in Finland is not well known. To provide more information, we examined whether body mass index (BMI) and the prevalence of overweight are associated with an individual's distance to the local community centre and population density in his/her resident area. The sample consisted of 5363 men and women, member...

The case study of Finland analyses accessibility in one of the most sparsely populated countries in Europe. The findings of this study are based on grid cell analyses which are free from administrative divisions. In the analysis of accessibility of the population and jobs, the presence of both urban densities and extreme scarcity is evident, and th...

Finland is currently undergoing a restructuring of the municipal and public service structure. This restructuring is an effort to react, in addition to tightening economy, to the changing circumstances with regard to the demographic structure, especially in rural areas. This paper examines the use of geographical information systems (GIS) to analyz...

The matter of scale is often ignored when analysing accessibility and its effects on population change. While accessibility has a concentrating effect on the activities of society on a regional scale, it also has a decentralising effect within urban areas in developed countries, including Finland. Population change is the outcome of numerous indivi...

We examined the association of health and well-being with moving using a detailed geographical scale. 7845 men and women born in northern Finland in 1966 were surveyed by postal questionnaire in 1997 and linked to 1 km(2) geographical grids based on each subject's home address in 1997-2000. Population density was used to classify each grid as rural...

The aim of this thesis is to study the effect of transport accessibility on population change in Finland and the matter of scale to this relationship. During the research period, 1880-2009, Finland has urbanized, changed from an agrarian to a post-industrial economy and the transport system has developed from being manually powered to one that is f...

To evaluate the association of self-reported health with residential area type defined by the population density in individual's local environment using a population-based cohort in Finland. Young adults of the Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 (4,201 women and 3,835 men), surveyed by a postal questionnaire in 1997, were linked to population densi...

This study analyzes the relation of accessibility by road and railway network to population change between the years 1970–2007 in Finland. Accessibility is evaluated at built-up area unit and municipal levels by potential accessibility analysis and by measuring accessibility to network. Analyses are done in decadal periods by using geographical inf...

Analysis based on historical geographical information systems (hgis) databases can be used to trace the relationship between railway infrastructure and population change in Finland from 1880 to 1970. The use of accessibility calculations, statistical analyses, and gis reveals that Finland's population was almost evenly distributed in 1880, when rai...

Everyday traffic accounts for a significant share of overall greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide (CO2). While several solutions have been proposed for decreasing the emissions, a new kind of land use planning is required in order to achieve long-term effects. This study focuses on the effect of large retail store locations in the...

The regional pattern of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) incidence among children in Finland was analysed applying several methods attempting to describe the geographical variation in occurrence of IDDM. From 1987 to 1991 the number of newly diagnosed cases aged 14 years or less at diagnosis was 1728. The incidence, the incidence rate rat...

Resorts are key elements in the tourism phenomenon, because they are considered places for tourism demand and supply. Basically, resorts are geographical units and, statistically, they are traditionally treated as administrative regions, that is as municipalities. However, resorts are often a part of a municipality, not independent administrative r...

Tourism is a key business sector for many geographically and economically marginal regions. The main form of tourism in these regions is nature-related tourism, consisting of activities such as hiking, fishing and various types of winter sports. The tourism resorts in marginal regions face the constant challenge of improving their tourist product t...

This paper presents foundations for building mobile environmental information systems (MEIS) that require a multidisciplinary approach. MEIS require expertise from environmental biology, geography and mobile technology. MEIS are very promising in bringing added value in the acquisition of environmental information with a multitude of mobile devices...

Tourism is a key business sector for many geographically and economically marginal regions. The main form of tourism in these regions is nature-related tourism, consisting of activities such as hiking, fishing and various types of winter sports. The tourism resorts in marginal regions face the constant challenge of improving their tourist product t...

In this paper the authors first examine the concept of the rural area and the related typologies and then analyse changes in the internal structure of rural areas in Finland by using georeferenced data. Rural areas seem to have been defined on the basis of land use and population density for as long as they have been a topic of research, but no una...

Income differentials among the population of Finland began to widen in the latter half of the 1990s, as reflected in a geographical analysis based on 1 × 1 km grid cell data produced by Statistics Finland, where the most densely populated cells are seen to have lower mean income levels than the others, and the spatial differences in income level wi...

Environmental information systems (EIS) have been in professional use for quite a long time. Applications of this domain often include features of quite common location based services (LBS). This means utilization of space-, time- and content-oriented data for positioning and routing services with various maps. Firstly, new integrated technology an...

The aim was to study the area-based variation of factors related to oral health among 6-year-olds in Kemi, Finland. The areal factors included were: percentage of unemployed, annual gross income, number of persons economically dependent on one employed person and percentage of household-dwelling units with poor standard of equipment. Numbers of dec...

In view of the crucial role of young people in society, especially as far as the future of sparsely populated rural areas is concerned, an analysis is made of absolute and relative changes in the 15–24-year age cohort in Finland and their effects on demographic and regional structure, employing GIS methods. The main material for this consists of ge...

2003). Georeferenced data as a tool for monitoring the concentration of population in Finland in 1970–1998. Fennia 181: 2, pp. 129–144. Helsinki. ISSN 0015-0010. Changes in the distribution of population in Finland over the period 1970– 1998 are examined in terms of a co-ordinate system of 1 x 1 km grid cells. The results indicate that this system...

Differences in income between population groups in Finland have begun to increase since the recession of the early 1990s. These differences are examined here in terms of mean taxable incomes per household in 1989, 1993 and 1997 in 1 × 1 km grid cells, and the results are compared with those obtained using postal districts and municipalities as area...

The aim of the present work was to explore small-area differences in mortality from all causes among males and females within the city of Oulu during the period 1978--1995 and to identify areas where mortality has been persistently high or low. Analyses carried out using Geographical Information System techniques with geo-referenced mortality data...

The use of georeferenced data in geographical research into unemployment reveals internal fluctuations and differences within localities. The observation unit in the present paper is a 1x1 km grid cell. The results obtained here indicate that the rate of unemployment in Finland during 1993-95 was highest in the most sparsely populated cells. The du...

An examination is made of the concept of economic dependency ratio and its applicability as a tool for analysing changes in regional structures in Finland against the background of the unprecendented rise in unemployment from 4.4 % to 22.2 % that took place in 1989-1993, when Finland moved from the middle rank in the European employment statistics...

The connection between migration and regional structure in Finland in the early 19905 is discussed on the basis of Geographic Irformation Systems (GIS) data from Statistics Finland, compiled for map coordinate grid cells of 1 x 1 km. The results indicate that data of this kind enable a more detailed typology to be drawn up for migration. At the reg...

Population density is generally calculated by dividing a given surface area with the number of its inhabitants. This is, for example, the principal method employed to identify areas of Sweden and Finland entitled to support under Objective 6 of the EU Structural Funds. This simple procedure, which in effect represents the relationship between the p...

This paper discusses certain aspects of the application of a georeferenced data system to the analysis of migration in Finland. The approach is methodological in nature, the aim being to test the system and the resulting material and to try out different GIS techniques for examining migration. The material comprises migration data produced by Stati...

The regional pattern of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) incidence among children in Finland was analysed applying several methods attempting to describe the geographical variation in occurrence of IDDM. From 1987 to 1991 the number of newly diagnosed cases aged 14 years or less at diagnosis was 1728. The incidence, the incidence rate rat...

The traditional approach to regional features of migration in Finland has been to set out from variables recorded for local government districts (communes) or other administrative units. The material for the present paper comprises more accurate migration data collected by Statistics Finland on a grid of 1 x 1 km squares defined by map coordinates....

We developed a test statistic based on an approach of Whittemore et al. (1987) to detect space–time clustering for non-infectious diseases. We extended the spatial test of Whittemore et al. by deriving conditional probabilities for Poisson distributed random variables. To combine spatial and time distances we defined a distance matrix D, where dij...

The aim is to describe the spatial patterns of milk consumption in Finland and changes in these over the period 1978-93. A clear tendency is noted throughout the country for the consumption of low-fat milk to increase significantly, with the main emphasis on the southern parts and the provincial capitals, large cities and major municipal centres. Q...

The article discusses regional changes in unemployment in Finland in the early 1990's on the basis of georeferenced grid cell data and employment figures compiled by Statistics Finland. The areal units are 1 × 1 km grid cells defined in a strip coordinate system. The investigation should be seen in the light of the rise in the unemployment rate fro...

The definition of a rural area varies from one country and one piece of research to another dependent on the criteria used. A definition is provided here which is based on exact georeferenced location data and serves to complement those put forward earlier. A further purpose of this study is to produce a methodological basis for defining different...

This paper discusses experiences with the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for analysing geo-referenced grid-based census data produced by Statistics Finland. The main aim is to say something about our experiences, the difficulties encountered and the new features and tools which we have noticed or employed in our work. -Authors

The structure of rural settlement in Finland is examined in the light of the structural and spatial processes of concentration and dispersal that have taken place in society, employing coordinate-based population and occupation variables supplied by the Central Statistical Office. Future prospects for the spatial structure are seen to include a con...

Under the terms of its charter, the original aim of the University of Oulu was to conduct research into conditions in northern Finland and the ways in which these could be developed. Although this definition was omitted from the new law concerning the University of Oulu enacted in 1983, cooperation with the surrounding northern communities still co...

The article employs certain variables describing functional and settlement structure selected from coordinate-based map grid data derived from the population censuses of 1980 and 1985 to examine the Finnish countryside and changes occurring in it as a part of the regional structure of the whole country. The grid system provides more accurate data f...