Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease of motor neurons. Called motor neuron disease (MND) in many countries.
ArcGIS
Esri's family of GIS software, including ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Pro and the app builders described on ArcGIS tools and training.
Buffer
The area within a chosen distance of a feature.
Census tract
A small statistical area defined by the Census Bureau, generally holding a few thousand residents.
Choropleth
A map that shades areas according to a value. Suited to rates, and misleading for raw counts.
Coordinate reference system (CRS)
The definition that gives coordinates their meaning on the earth.
ECTO
The Environmental Conditions, Treatments and Exposures Ontology, an open ontology for describing exposure events.
Exposome
The totality of environmental exposures across a person's life.
FAIR
Findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable: principles for managing research data.
Feature layer
A hosted set of geographic features with attributes, the basic building block of ArcGIS web maps.
Geocoding
Converting an address to coordinates.
GEOID
The Census Bureau identifier for a geographic area, built from Federal Information Processing Series (FIPS) codes.
GIS
Geographic information system.
HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the United States law whose Privacy Rule lists geographic identifiers among the elements that make health information identifiable.
IRB
Institutional review board, the committee that reviews research involving human participants.
Mappers
The volunteer group of GIS professionals, ALS researchers and advocates who build GeoALS maps and apps.
MND
Motor neuron disease.
OHDSI
Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics, the open science community that maintains the OMOP Common Data Model.
OMOP CDM
The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model, a standard structure for observational health data.
Ontology
A structured vocabulary in which each concept has an identifier, a definition, and stated relationships to other concepts.
Raster
Gridded data in which each cell holds a value.
Residential history
The sequence of addresses where a person has lived, with dates.
Service area
The region reachable from a location within a set travel time or distance.
Spatial join
Attaching attributes from one layer to another on the basis of location.
Vector
Geographic data stored as points, lines or polygons.
ZCTA
ZIP Code Tabulation Area, the Census Bureau's areal approximation of a ZIP Code.