Meteorological Data for Australian Postal Areas

Climate by areas postcode (ABS Postal Areas 2001) Background: To explain the possible effects of exposure to weather conditions on population health outcomes, weather data need to be calculated at a level in space and time that is appropriate for the health data. There are various ways of estimating exposure values from raw data collected at weather stations but the rationale for using one technique rather than another; the significance of the difference in the values obtained; and the effect these have on a research question are factors often not explicitly considered. In this study we compare different techniques for allocating weather data observations to small geographical areas and different options for weighting averages of these observations when calculating estimates of daily precipitation and temperature for Australian Postal Areas. Options that weight observations based on distance from population centroids and population size are more computationally intensive but give estimates that conceptually are more closely related to the experience of the population. Results: Options based on values derived from sites internal to postal areas, or from nearest neighbour sites; that is, using proximity polygons around weather stations intersected with postal areas; tended to include fewer stations observations in their estimates, and missing values were common. Options based on observations from stations within 50 kilometres radius of centroids and weighting of data by distance from centroids gave more complete estimates. Using the geographic centroid of the postal area gave estimates that differed slightly from the population weighted centroids and the population weighted average of sub-unit estimates. Conclusion: To calculate daily weather exposure values for analysis of health outcome data for small areas, the use of data from weather stations internal to the area only, or from neighbouring weather stations (allocated by the use of proximity polygons), is too limited. The most appropriate method conceptually is the use of weather data from sites within 50 kilometres radius of the area weighted to population centres, but a simpler acceptable option is to weight to the geographic centroid.
Type
Collection
Title
Meteorological Data for Australian Postal Areas
Collection Type
Dataset
Access Privileges
Meteorology and Health
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
10.4225/13/50BBFCFE08A12
Website Address
https://gislibrary-extreme-weather.anu.edu.au/poa_weather; http://nesstar.ada.edu.au/webview/index.jsp?object=http://nesstar.ada.edu.au:80/obj/fStudy/au.edu.anu.ada.ddi.01230
Brief Description
Climate by areas postcode (ABS Postal Areas 2001)
Full Description
Climate by areas postcode (ABS Postal Areas 2001) Background: To explain the possible effects of exposure to weather conditions on population health outcomes, weather data need to be calculated at a level in space and time that is appropriate for the health data. There are various ways of estimating exposure values from raw data collected at weather stations but the rationale for using one technique rather than another; the significance of the difference in the values obtained; and the effect these have on a research question are factors often not explicitly considered. In this study we compare different techniques for allocating weather data observations to small geographical areas and different options for weighting averages of these observations when calculating estimates of daily precipitation and temperature for Australian Postal Areas. Options that weight observations based on distance from population centroids and population size are more computationally intensive but give estimates that conceptually are more closely related to the experience of the population. Results: Options based on values derived from sites internal to postal areas, or from nearest neighbour sites; that is, using proximity polygons around weather stations intersected with postal areas; tended to include fewer stations observations in their estimates, and missing values were common. Options based on observations from stations within 50 kilometres radius of centroids and weighting of data by distance from centroids gave more complete estimates. Using the geographic centroid of the postal area gave estimates that differed slightly from the population weighted centroids and the population weighted average of sub-unit estimates. Conclusion: To calculate daily weather exposure values for analysis of health outcome data for small areas, the use of data from weather stations internal to the area only, or from neighbouring weather stations (allocated by the use of proximity polygons), is too limited. The most appropriate method conceptually is the use of weather data from sites within 50 kilometres radius of the area weighted to population centres, but a simpler acceptable option is to weight to the geographic centroid.
Contact Email
ivan.hanigan@canberra.edu.au
Fields of Research
111706 - Epidemiology
Keywords
geographical areas; health; humidity; population; postal area; postcode; precipitation; temperature; weather; Environment, Conservation, Land use; postcodes; rainfall; zones
Date Coverage
2005
1990
Geospatial Location
AU
iso31661
Date of data creation
2010
Year of data publication
2010
Creator(s) for Citation
Hanigan
Ivan
Publisher for Citation
Australian Data Archive
Publications
10.1017/S0950268810001901
Hall G, Hanigan IC, Dear KBG and Vally H. The influence of weather on community gastroenteritis in Australia. Epidemiology and Infection. DOI: 0.1017/S0950268810001901
doi
10.1186/1476-072X-5-38
Hanigan I, Hall G, Dear KBG. A comparison of methods for calculating population exposure estimates of daily weather for health research. International Journal of Health Geographics 2006;5(38)
doi
https://github.com/ivanhanigan/POAweather
Meteorological data for Australian Postal Areas
uri
http://www.garnautreview.org.au/ca25734e0016a131/WebObj/03-AThreehealthoutcomes/%24File/03-A%20Three%20health%20outcomes.pdf
H.J. Bambrick, KBG Dear, R.E. Woodruff, I C Hanigan, A.J. McMichael, Commonwealth of Australia, (2008)
Garnaut Climate Change Review
uri
Access Rights
Open access. License: CC BY 4.0
Rights held in and over the data
Copyright © 2011, The Australian National University. All rights reserved. Based on National Climate Centre of the Bureau of Meteorology data. Based on ABS data, Australian Bureau of Statistics 2001 Census data is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence.
Licence Type
CC-BY - Attribution

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Identifier: anudc:2651

Status: Published
Published to:
  • Australian National University
  • Australian National Data Service
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