Linlin Wang presented her MSENV Technical Report Final Oral Defense on May 31
| June 07, 2005 | |
| Linlin Wang presented her MSENV Technical Report Final Oral Defense on Tuesday, May 31, 2005 at 2:00pm. Details are as follows below.Spatiotemporal Analysis of Black Death in France: 1347-1350The Black Death was one of the worst natural disasters in history. The deep and long-lasting effect that Black Death had in the daily life, culture, and economy of Europe during the period 1347-51 AD has lured scholars from various disciplines who studied the Black Death from different perspectives. However, all previous studies that had been concerned with important modeling aspects of the epidemic (spatiotemporal dynamics of the disease, mapping, etc.) have shown to be inadequate. This report makes an attempt to advance the understanding of salient spatiotemporal features of the epidemic distribution in France under conditions of uncertainty. This goal is achieved by means of four consecutive steps: collecting information from a wide range of interdisciplinary sources; converting multi-sourced evidence across geographical space to general and site-specific Knowledge Base (KB); studying the composite space-time mortality distributions in terms of the stochastic theory concepts and tools of a synthetic epidemic paradigm (SEP); using modern Temporary Geography Information System (TGIS) technology and the Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) technique to process the mortality Knowledge Base (KB) and displaying the findings in the forms of substantive space-time maps and other forms of visual representation (including mortality maps, space-time correlation functions, and geographical evolution maps). These results show that Black Death visited almost every single corner of France except the uninhabited mountainous areas in the Pyrenees and the Alps and a few more places. The highest virulence occurred in the warmer and drier southern part of the country. Marseille was the first place to be visited by the plague, from which the epidemic moved to most of the rest of the country and eventually the rest of Europe. Our analysis demonstrates that the plague was spread primarily overland. In summary, we have produced sufficient evidence to claim that use of BME have advance understanding of spatiotemporal nature of Black Death in France. Results are encouraging enough to extend the analysis to all Europe.
Committee Members: Dr. George Christakos, Advisor Dr. Ricardo Olea, Reader Dr. Marc Serre, Reader For further information please contact Rebecca Riggsbee Lloyd by email at Rebecca_Lloyd@unc.edu |
