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I was born in Ottawa, Ontario and moved around the country as my father was in the RCAF. I entered ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ in electrical engineering but left for teacher training at Toronto Teacher's College where I graduated in 1962 and taught grades 6-8 in North York from 1962-65. During that period I took university extension courses at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥. I then enrolled full-time at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ in 1965 graduating with a B.A.(Hons) in 1967. I went to the University of Bristol in England for my Ph.D. (1973) under a Commonwealth Scholarship. I returned to ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ in 1970 as a lecturer in Geography and in 1990 I became the Director of the GIS Lab.

Research Interests:

I arrived in Bristol just as the massive 1967-8 Foot and Mouth Disease epizootic in livestock in the UK began. Early reports about the spread of this disease suggested that traditional views about its spread were flawed and that new knowledge was essential to developing effective control programs. Furthermore, geography appeared to be an excellent vehicle for undertaking research to determine the factors affecting the spread of the disease. That initial research focus has lead me to work in developing Geographic Information Systems, simulation models of disease and management informations systems for solving issues in the epidemiology and control of animal and human infectious and chronic diseases. For some twenty years, I have been active in helping agencies in Canada and the United States to understand the spread of rabies in North America . That work has lead to the development of control programs in Canada and the United States that use millions of air-dropped baits containing vaccine to immunize wildlife populations. As well, my current work includes the development of disease surveillance systems, workload management algorithms for the provision of home care, community information systems for social service planning, emergency response systems, assessment of the location and allocation of cancer care clinics and radio and sonar telemetry for monitoring the location of terrestrial and underwater species. Key tenets of our work is that properly designed and implemented information systems and an understanding of spatial dynamics of the process under study are essential for efficient decision making.

Currently Funded Research Projects

Principal Investigator
The Spread and Control of Rabies (Grants from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and the United States Department of Agriculture)

Assessing the location of Cancer Care Clinics in Ontario (Cancer Care Ontario Grant)
Home Care Workload Management (Community Care Access Center Contract)
Early Years On-Line Resources for Everyone (EYORE) (Ontario Ministry of Community & Social Services Contract)

Co-Investigator
Underwater Ecological Observatory (Industrial Development Grant from Lotek Engineering)