Upcoming Map(s) of the Week: Infectious disease

This week, we begin a four-week series on infectious disease. I’ve been wanting to come back to mapping public health data since our series on school vaccinations last summer.

The data comes from reports sent to medical officers of health in Toronto, Peel, Halton, York and Durham sent to the Ministry of Health in 2008. The Ministry released a spreadsheet in response to an FOI request with the reported disease, the region that the report came from, and the first three characters of the postal code of the patient, which was available in most cases.

More information on Ontario’s reportable disease system can be found here.

There were 29,753 communicable disease reports in the five regions last year. The full breakdown is below. We will only be mapping some of them. The first maps will appear as the week goes on.

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CHLAMYDIAL INFECTIONS	12949
GONORRHOEA (ALL TYPES)	2468
INFLUENZA	2270
HEPATITIS C	1982
CAMPYLOBACTER ENTERITIS	1964
SALMONELLOSIS	1219
GIARDIASIS	836
PERTUSSIS (WHOOPING COUGH)	712
OTHER SYPHILIS	687
HIV	643
AMEBIASIS	583
STREPTOCOCCUS PNEUMONIAE, INVASIVE	445
TUBERCULOSIS	385
INFECTIOUS SYPHILIS	339
HEPATITIS B	217
YERSINIOSIS	186
GROUP A STREPTOCOCCAL DISEASE, INVASIVE	173
SHIGELLOSIS	165
MALARIA	138
VEROTOXIN PRODUCING E. COLI INCLUDING HUS	131
ADVERSE VACCINE EVENT	124
CRYPTOSPORIDIOSIS	120
FOOD POISONING, ALL CAUSES	113
CHICKENPOX (VARICELLA)	105
ENCEPHALITIS/MENINGITIS	102
TYPHOID FEVER	87
HEPATITIS A	86
AIDS	74
CYCLOSPORIASIS	68
LYME DISEASE	55
PARATYPHOID FEVER	53
LEGIONELLOSIS	45
LISTERIOSIS	38
MEASLES	38
GROUP B STREPTOCOCCAL DISEASE, NEONATAL	28
CLOSTRIDIUM DIFFICILE - ASSOCIATED DISEASE (CDAD)	27
MENINGOCOCCAL DISEASE, INVASIVE	19
MENINGITIS - VIRAL	12
WEST NILE VIRUS ILLNESS	12
CREUTZFELDT-JAKOB DISEASE, ALL TYPE	11
RESPIRATORY INFECTION, INSTITUTIONAL OUTBREAKS	9
MUMPS	6
MENINGITIS - BACTERIAL	4
BRUCELLOSIS	3
HAEMOPHILUS INFLUENZAE B DISEASE, INVASIVE	3
HEPATITIS D	3
BOTULISM	2
CHOLERA	2
ENCEPHALITIS - PRIMARY VIRAL	2
HERPES, NEONATAL	2
MENINGITIS - OTHER	2
OPHTHALMIA NEONATORUM	2
GASTROENTERITIS, INSTITUTIONAL OUTBREAKS	1
Q FEVER	1
RUBELLA	1
TULAREMIA	1
Grand Total	29753

Map of the Week: Pedestrian accidents

CHARLA JONES/TORONTO STAR

(July 11: The pedestrian and cycling accident maps worked fine on their own as embedded maps, but something about displaying them both on the same page made many browsers very unstable. They’re now linked below.)

Map: Pedestrian accidents, 2008

This week, we look at 2008’s pedestrian accidents. A total of 1,932 were reported to police last year.
Outside the downtown core, pedestrian accidents are concentrated on Eglinton between Brimley and Markham Rd., Sheppard between Kennedy Rd. and Warden, Yonge between Steeles and the 401, and Mount Pleasant south of Eglinton.

Here are the top eight intersections for pedestrian collisions:

9    BATHURST and KING
6    BLOOR and LANSDOWNE
5    CHURCH and JANE
5    COLLEGE and SPADINA
5    JANE and WILSON
5    KEELE and LAWRENCE
5    LAWRENCE and MARKHAM
5    STEELES and YONGE

For local areas, the map works best at the highest or second-highest magnification.

Nerd box:

The larger numbers involved forced a different presentation from last week’s bike collision map. This map only shows locations where two or more pedestrian accidents happened during the year, with circles of different sizes indicating the number.

I tried mapping all the accidents, but the map looked like this:

If you don't mind the visual clutter, a map showing single accidents is here.

It works best at the highest magnification and needs some patience, but does add new information. For example: Mount Pleasant between Roehampton (a block north of Eglinton) and Balliol (a block north of the cemetery) had 11 pedestrian accidents last year, or about one per 100 metres of roadway. Roncesvalles between High Park Boulevard and Queen also had more than I would have expected - eight, or one for every 112 metres of roadway.

What patterns do you see? Let us know in the comments.

Map of the Week: Bike accidents

(July 11: The pedestrian and cycling accident maps worked fine on their own as embedded maps, but something about displaying them both on the same page made many browsers very unstable. They’re now linked below.)

Map: Bicycle accidents, 2008

This week, we map 1,068 bicycle accidents reported to Toronto police in 2008. The data came to us from the Toronto transportation department, which analyzes accident reports they receive from the police.

Bike accidents seem to cluster in the area west of downtown, especially on College between Spadina and maybe Dufferin, and Queen between Spadina and Ossington. Dundas, King and Bloor have fewer, though Bloor between Avenue and Bathurst has more. To the east, the Bloor cluster ends abruptly at Jarvis.

(The equivalent part of the east end, which is similar in urban design, has far fewer bike accidents, though accidents do cluster on the Danforth between Pape and Broadview.)

Bay between College and Bloor also seems to have a cluster, as do major streets in the downtown area south of Dundas and north of Adelaide or so.

Time didn’t allow an overlay showing bike lanes. (Maps can be found here and here) Informally, though, accidents seem to cluster where bike lanes aren’t, and vice versa. Exceptions seem to be the College bike lane and a stretch of the Dundas St. E. bike lane west of Pape, where there is nearly one accident per block.

110 intersections had more than one accident (the great majority with two). Here are the top nine:

7     Bay and Dundas
7     College and Crawford
5     Queen and Broadview
5     Yonge and Dundas
4     Bloor and Bathurst
4     Bloor and Keele
4     Spadina and Dundas
4     Islington and the Queensway
4     King and John

Nerd box:

The large number of points created a challenge. Our normal method of loading them into an XML file created a map which was slow to load and reload at a different zoom level, and also slow to manipulate, even in Firefox. In IE it was worse.

Our alternative, loading a KML file into Google MyMaps, failed when it refused to keep loading somewhere in the mid-hundreds. MyMaps has limits, but it’s sometimes hard to see what they are other than by trial and error.

We ended up with Geocommons, the free service that the Vancouver Sun used for its parking ticket map.

In IE, it takes anywhere from 9 to 17 seconds to load, but as far as I can tell stays loaded once that has happened. The main difference, as far as I can tell, is that it uses Flash.

In any case, the look and feel of the map is different from what you may be used to seeing – let us know what you think in the comments.

The full-sized map can be seen here.

Next week, we will look at pedestrian accidents.

400,000

Somebody this morning, as far as I can tell looking at a street racing map, gave this blog its 400,000th hit.

Map of the Week: The Star's neighbourhood map, version 3.0

TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR

Link to the map

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We went out of our way to ask you what you had to say about the neighbourhood map Kenneth Kidd wrote about on Sunday, and you responded - on top of scores of e-mails Ken received, there were 36 comments on the article and at last count 95 on this blog.

Ken distilled these into 29 specific changes, which now appear on the map:

1. Added Wellington Place, bounded by King, Spadina, Front and Bathurst.

2. Added Wynford-Concorde, a high-rise community bounded by Eglinton, Don Mills Rd., the Don Valley and the railway tracks to the north.

4. Added Keelesdale, bounded by Rogers Rd., Keele, Black Creek and the little ravine just to the north of Gulliver Rd.

5. Changed name of South Riverdale to Riverside-South Riverdale.

6. Changed name of Rouge Hill to West Rouge and extended the western boundary to Port Union Rd.

7. Altered name of Port Union neighbourhood to read Centennial-Port Union.

8. Added The Pocket, bounded by the Greenwood Yards, the train tracks to the south, the Danforth to the north and Jones to the west.

9. Added Bridlewood, bounded by Sheppard, Finch, Pharmacy and Ward.

10. Added Wishing Well, bounded by Sheppard, the 401, Warden and VP.

11. Included the little area north of the tracks in The Junction.

12. Adjusted Rosedale boundary so that it’s Rosedale Valley Rd. in the south.

13. Adjusted Yorkville boundary so it extends no further north than Davenport. Area north of that is nameless.

14. Extended Milliken boundary further west so that it includes Milliken GO station and a few remaining buildings from the original village as well as the industrial area.

15. Altered name of Humber Heights to read Humber Heights-Westmount

16. Made the western border of Corktown Parliament.

17. East of Parliament, created Old Town, and extended it to Church.

18. Added Tritown, to cover the area bounded by Bloor to the north, Sherbourne to the east, Jarvis to the west and Carlton to the south.

19. Adjust Bayview Village so that the eastern boundary is the river, and the southern boundary is Sheppard.

20. Added Chestnut Hills, bounded by Islington, Dundas and Angelsey.

21. Added Brimwood, bounded by McNicoll, Brimley, Finch and McCowan.

22. Called area at northern end of Morningside Heights, across the hydro corridor, Brookside.

23. Added Treverton Park, area north of Eglinton between Kennedy and the railway tracks until the park.

24. Make the northeast boundary of Mount Dennis the railway tracks.

25. Fix polygon to Parkview Hills to include Doris, Alder and Northline, streets on the periphery.

26. Humber Bay Shores created from part of Humber Bay. This is the condo development on the Etobicoke side of the mouth of the Humber.

27. Stonegate created from parts of Humber Bay and Sunnylea

28. Humberwood created in the Hwy. 427 and Rexdale Blvd. area.

29. Junction Triangle created, near Bloor St. W. and Perth Ave.

The Star's neighbourhood map, version 2.0

RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR

Link to the map

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Kenneth Kidd is writing in Sunday's paper about the newest iteration of our neighbourhood map, which has been tweaked a great deal over the last few days, largely as a response to your comments on this blog. Neighbouhoods have been merged, unmerged, grown, shrunk, added and removed, and this is reflected on the newest version of the map.

The various iterations of the neighbourhood map are discussed here and here.

Please feel free to use the comment section below. If you disagree with where the map places you, or if you live in an area we haven't defined as a neighbourhood and feel you should be, it would be helpful to put your full postal code in the comments.

Map of the Week: Toronto architecture of three centuries

TORONTO STAR FILE

Columnist Christopher Hume explains ten Toronto buildings - from the Georgian dignity of Osgoode Hall to the postmodern whimsy of OCAD to old made new at the Wychwood barns - which have something to say about our city's past and future.

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Map link