Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have developed rapidly in recent years and now provide powerful tools for the capture, manipulation, integration, interrogation, modelling, analysis and visualisation of data - tools that are already used for policy support in a wide range of areas at almost all geographic and administrative levels. This holds especially for emergency preparedness and health risk reduction, which are all essentially spatial problems. To date, however, many initiatives have remained disconnected and uncoordinated, leading to less powerful, less compatible and less widely implemented systems than might otherwise have been the case.
The important matters discussed here include the probabilistic nature of most environmental hazards and the semi-random factors that influence interactions between these and human exposures; the effects of temporal and spatial scales on hazard assessment and imputed risk; the effects of measurement error in risk estimation and the stratification of risks and their impacts according to socioeconomic characteristics; and the quantification of socioeconomic differences in vulnerability and susceptibility to environmental hazards.

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One. GIS for emergency preparedness and health risk reduction: concepts and principles.- 1. Preparing for environmental health emergencies: the role of GIS.- 2. Timelines, environments and issues of risk in health: the practical algebra of (x,y,t,a).- 3 Social models of disaster: vulnerability and empowerment.- 4 Uncertainty in the application of GIS for predictive health risk assessment for a radioactive waste repository in Slovenia.- Two. GIS for emergency preparedness.- 5 Evaluation of volcanic fallout impact from Vesuvius using GIS.- 6 Volcanic risk assessment and spatial planning policies in the island of Hawai'i.- 7 The risk assessment of hazardous materials transportation using GIS.- 8 A GIS-aided frequency planning tool for terrestrial broadcasting and land mobile services.- 9 Progress towards harmonised European industrial risk management information systems.- 10 Application of the Seveso II Directive in Slovenia with the support of GIS.- Three. GIS for health risk reduction.- 11 A European health and environment information system for exposure and disease mapping and risk assessment (EUROHEIS).- 12 Address geocoding for small area environmental health studies in Denmark.- 13 Health characteristics of the Stockholm population - disease mapping using a computerised system.- 14 Small area statistics on health (SMASH): a system for rapid investigations of cancer in Finland.- 15 Geographical distribution of cardiovascular mortality in Comunidad Valenciana (Spain).- 16 Application of GIS for assessing the risk of water-borne diseases in the Samarkand Province.- 17 Geographical aspects of mortality and morbidity data in Hungary: a GIS analysis.- List of Workshop Participants.