
Wei TuGeorgia Southern University | GSU · Department of Geology & Geography
Wei Tu
Doctor of Philosophy
About
43
Publications
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Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (43)
Few studies have considered the impacts of sample size and sample ratio of presence and absence points on the results of random forest (RF) testing. We applied this technique for the prediction of the spatial distribution of snail habitats based on a total of 15,000 sample points (5,000 presence samples and 10,000 control points). RF models were bu...
Screening programmes are important for early diagnosis and treatment of colorectal cancer (CRC) but they are not equally efficient in all locations. Depending on which hospital people belong to, they often are not willing to follow up even after a positive result, resulting in a lower-than-expected overall detection rate. Improved allocation of hea...
This chapter provides an applied introduction to model two types of point-based geospatial data using Bayesian methods. Unlike frequentist inference, Bayesian inference describes unknown statistical parameters with a prior distribution. With this foundation, Bayesian approach provides a valuable alternative to analyze geospatial data. We begin the...
Background
Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is an important public health problem. A monovalent EV-A71 vaccine was launched in China in 2016. Previous studies showed that inactivated monovalent EV-A71 vaccines were highly efficient against HFMD associated with EV-A71 but not against HFMD with other etiologies, leading to a hypothesis that the i...
Whether meteorological factors influence COVID-19 transmission is an issue of major public health concern, but available evidence remains unclear and limited for several reasons, including the use of report date which can lag date of symptom onset by a considerable period. We aimed to generate reliable and robust evidence of this relationship based...
Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) has been a serious threat to children’s health in China since 2008, and quantifying the transmission heterogeneity of HFMD is crucial for understanding its spatio-temporal dynamic mechanisms and developing precise disease containment strategies. In this study, surveillance data of HFMD cases for patients 15 year...
Preterm birth (PTB) is an important cause of infant morbidity and mortality around the world. A good understanding of its associations with relevant factors is essential for an effective reduction in PTB risk. This study explores the spatially varying relationships between PTB and demographic, socioeconomic, and behavioral factors in the state of G...
Background
Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP), located in Jinshan District, is the largest industrial zone in China. However, the impact on the residents’ health has not been assessed. The study aimed to identify the impact of living in chemical industrial areas on the health of first-grade students
Method
A cross-sectional study was conducted...
Past studies have rather consistently shown significant positive association between firearm ownership and suicide rates (particularly firearm-related) in the United States. However, the impact of spatial dependence of suicide rates has not been considered in the existing research that took an ecological studies approach. To bridge this gap in the...
COVID-19 has become a pandemic. The influence of meteorological factors on the transmission and spread of COVID-19 is of interest. This study sought to examine the associations of daily average temperature (AT) and relative humidity (ARH) with the daily count of COVID-19 cases in 30 Chinese provinces (in Hubei from December 1, 2019 to February 11,...
Background
The first case of COVID-19 atypical pneumonia was reported in Wuhan, China on December 1, 2019. Since then, at least 33 other countries have been affected and there is a possibility of a global outbreak. A tremendous amount of effort has been made to understand its transmission dynamics; however, the temporal and spatial transmission het...
COVID-19 has become a pandemic. The influence of meteorological factors on the transmission and spread of COVID-19 if of interest. This study sought to examine the associations of daily average temperature (AT) and relative humidity (ARH) with the daily count of COVID-19 cases in 30 Chinese provinces (in Hubei from December 1, 2019 to February 11,...
Spatial accessibility to medical resources is an integral component of universal health coverage. However, research evaluating the spatial accessibility of healthcare services at the community level in China remains limited. We assessed the community-level spatial access to beds, doctors, and nurses at general hospitals and identified the shortage...
Suicide is a serious but preventable public health issue. Several previous studies have revealed a positive association between altitude and suicide rates at the county level in the contiguous United States. We assessed the association between suicide rates and altitude using a cross-county ecological study design. Data on suicide rates were obtain...
Past studies have reported the association between living in a socioeconomically deprived neighborhood and elevated preterm births (PtB) risk after adjusting certain individual level confounders. This article examined the association between county-level deprivation and PtB risk of three stratified racial groups, white, black, and the others. The a...
Suicide is a serious but preventable public health issue. Several previous studies have
revealed a positive association between altitude and suicide rates at the county level in the contiguous United States. We assessed the association between suicide rates and altitude using a cross-county ecological study design. Data on suicide rates were obtain...
Preterm birth (PTB) is a major cause of infant mortality and morbidity. The relationships between PTB and ambient air pollution have been examined by many previous studies worldwide, but the results vary among different studies, and no general conclusion could be drawn about the relationships. We analyzed 116,112 live and singleton births in year 2...
This paper examines the spatial-temporal dynamics of inequality from the perspective of social deprivation in the context of continuous growth of grain production using national census data from 2000 and 2010 for Henan province, China. Our analytical results show an overall level of social deprivation that is high and a widening social deprivation...
Birth weight is an important indicator of overall infant health and a strong predictor of infant morbidity and mortality, and low birth weight (LBW) is a leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. Numerous studies have examined the associations of birth weight with ambient air pollution, but the results were inconsistent. In this study...
Accurate assessments of the population exposed to seismic hazard are crucial in seismic risk mapping. Recent rapid urbanization in China has resulted in substantial changes in the size and structure of the population exposed to seismic hazard. Using the latest population census data and seismic maps, this work investigated spatiotemporal changes in...
This study estimates the neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) effect on the risk of preterm birth (PTB) using multilevel regression (MLR) models. Birth data retrieved from year 2000 and 2010 Georgia Vital Records were linked to their respective census tracts. Principle component analysis (PCA) was performed on nine selected census variables and...
This study investigates the contextual effect of neighbourhood socio-economic status (SES) on the risk of preterm birth (PTB) using multilevel models. Birth data retrieved from 2000 Georgia Vital Records were geocoded and joined to their respective census tracts. The census tract level Index of Deprivation (IoD) was calculated using nine 2000 Censu...
Low birth weight (LBW), defined as a live birth weighing <2,500 g, is a significant public health problem in the United States, especially a few states including Georgia. Although much work has been done to study the epidemiology of LBW in various regions, the spatial–temporal patterns of LBW prevalence in Georgia remain unclear to a large degree....
This paper presents a carbon emission inventory in Shanghai for the period from 2000 to 2008 covering six sectors of stationary combustion, transportation, industrial processes, waste disposal and treatment, agricultural activities and forestry sink and three greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O). The aim is to reflect carbon emissions in Shanghai,...
Birth weight is an important indicator of overall infant health and a strong predictor of infant morbidity and mortality, and low birth weight (LBW) is a leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. However, the factors that affect birth weight remain unclear. A spatial statistical technique, Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) is a...
Low birth weight (LBW), defined as a live birth weighing less than 2500 g, is a significant public health problem in the United States, but the complex nature of the etiology of this problem is not fully understood. Moreover, significant disparities in LBW prevalence are well documented among certain populations, particularly in minority and unders...
The structural change of the Texas regional economy in the 1990s is analysed using input-output and shift-share analyses. As the fastest growing economic sectors in all thirteen Texas regions, the information segment is also found to be more important as an input factor in the production processes. The 'informatization' of the Texas economy is foun...
This paper examines the substitution of information for energy in the U.S. regional economy during the 1990s using input-output (IO)-based methods. On the basis of the analyses of three-segment 10 models for the years 1990, 1995, and 2000 at three levels of geographic scales, it was found that: 1) the Information segment grew much faster than the o...
Desde el final de los años 90, son frecuentes los debates sobre la aparición de una economía digital en Estados Unidos a un nivel nacional, pero poco se sabe aún sobre la forma cómo esa economía digital se manifiesta en los niveles regional o metropolitano. Este papel presentamos un estudio empírico sobre la dinámica de la estructura económica en e...
This article critically reviews the evolution of urban environmental management in Shanghai since 1978. Established in a transitional post-socialist economy and shaped by a spectacular urban redevelopment process, the current environmental management framework of Shanghai has succeeded in mitigating major industrial pollution and improving urban am...
This study developed a prototype of an environmental assessment tool, SEA_LUP_SD, based on the system dynamics model. SEA_LUD_SD can simulate and evaluate information feedback of land use plan options and three related systems, population change, economic development, and environment conditions. This tool was then applied to the Shanghai land use m...
This paper examines the substitution of information and energy sectors in the Texas economy during the 1990s using an input-output (IO) based approach. On the basis of the analysis of three-segment Texas IO models for the years of 1990, 1994, and 1999, it is concluded that: 1) there is a trend of informatization in the state of Texas during the 199...
This study evaluates the effectiveness of the Smart Growth Initiatives of the city of Austin, Texas using GIS and spatial analysis technologies. The preliminary results show some evidence of the usefulness of the initiatives.
Desde el final de los años 90, son frecuentes los debates sobre la aparición de una economía digital en Estados Unidos a un nivel nacional, pero poco se sabe aún sobre la forma cómo esa economía digital se manifiesta en los niveles regional o metropolitano. Este papel presentamos un estudio empírico sobre la dinámica de la estructura económica en e...
Since the publication of the Costs of Sprawl by the Real Estate Research Corporation in 1974, scholars and policy makers have been debating the pros and cons of suburban urban sprawl (Kunstler 1993, 1996; Ewing 1997; Gordon and Richardson 1997; Burchell et al. 1998; Katz and Bradley 1999; Duany et al. 2000). Although a wide spectrum of opinions reg...
This dissertation investigates the dynamic economic structure transformation and its corresponding environmental consequences at the Austin-San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area (Austin MSA) from 1990 to 2008. Input-output (IO) analysis is the major methodology and environmental problems are defined as emissions of industrial point air pollutant...