ABSTRACT
Land use describes the actual form of land, such as a forest or open water and classification based on human utilization. Land use map provides the information about the current landscape of an area. In this study, the Lower Bhavani basin's land use and land cover were classified using GIS platforms and data from the Landsat 8 satellite. The platform utilized in this study were Semi-Automated Plugin (SAP) in QGIS and Random forest method in Google Earth Engine (GEE). The findings suggested that both platforms performed efficiently and displayed comparable percentages of land covered by various land use features. The accuracy of the resulting land use map was evaluated using a Google Earth image, and it was discovered that SAP and GEE hold 91.8% and 92.6% of the total accuracy. This study aids in evaluating and classifying the various Geographic Information System platforms land use trends.
ABSTRACT
@#Introduction: Advancement in digital technology opens new doors for food safety auditors when it comes to performing food safety audits. Surge of Covid cases since year 2020 has seen an unprecedented switch to remote auditing by the Food Safety and Quality Programme under the arm of Ministry of Health in Malaysia. Methods: This paper presents the use of QGIS, an open-source cross-platform for geographic information system (GIS) to store, manage and visualise 2 types of data, i.e. real time data collected via a mobile device using QField, an open-source mobile application and also fixed data retrieved from existing database. New data from obtained from field sampling and surveillance presents updated information for food safety auditing and enforcement purposes. A total of 4972 datasets were obtained from the Ministry of Health’s Food Safety and Quality Division database on food factories from all 13 states and 3 federal territories in Malaysia. These datasets were transformed and stored into QGIS point layer for performing data classification analysis on clustering of HACCP, GMP and MeSTI certifications. Results: The Penang state has the most HACCP certified companies in fish and fish product category, Selangor is the highest for confectionery industry and Sabah for food services. The general output of mobile GIS provides a big picture of distribution of food safety certifications in Malaysia while more specific adoption of QField can assist in effective field work planning for enforcement officers and auditors leading to cost calculation via information on location, distance and time. Conclusion: QGIS application for spatial and temporal visualisation of data benefits the food safety auditing in Malaysia
ABSTRACT
Background: Around 0.84 million people contracted malaria in India in the year 2017 and it resulted in 194 deaths. This study was conducted to describe the demographic and clinical profile as well as the geographical distribution of malaria patients attending a tertiary care hospital in Mangaluru.Methods: It was a record based descriptive study. All the malaria cases which were admitted from 1st May 2017 till 30th April 2018 were included in the study. QGIS software was used to plot the cases geographically.Results: A total of 97 malaria cases were present, of which 74.2% were males. The mean age of the participants was 33.4 years. Fever and chills were the most common presenting complaints (94.8% and 85.6% respectively) and thrombocytopenia was the foremost complication. Diagnosis was done using blood smear in 45 cases and rapid diagnostic kit in 59 cases. 8 patients were detected positive by both the tests. Plasmodium vivax (69%) was the most common infection. QGIS plotting of address showed that 61.4% were from Mangaluru block. Rest of the cases were from other parts of Karnataka, Kerala and Bihar.Conclusions: Malaria has a male preponderance and usually affects the economically productive age group. Thrombocytopenia was a common complication, thus necessitating close vigilance on platelet counts in malaria patients. Thick and thin blood smear is recommended to be performed to every case irrespective of their rapid diagnostic kit results. Mangaluru block accounted for 60 cases out of 97 cases which necessitates intensification of preventive measures in the block.