Mr Paul Konings

MGIS (UNE), BSc (Psych) (ANU)
Contractor - Senior Research Spatial Scientist

Biography

Mr Konings is a contracted senior spatial scientist at the National Centre for Geographic & Resource Analysis in Primary Health Care (GRAPHC) in the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) at the Australian National University. GRAPHC was established in 2011, to support geographic and location based aspects of primary health care research. GRAPHC has been created within APHCRI to promote and facilitate the use of GIS to inform locally relevant and equitable solutions for targeting health resources and services in Australia.  GRAPHC is undertaking its own research, supporting other researchers in applying geographic and spatial tools, and participating in capacity building of both human and information technology resources to further support this research.

Mr Konings is responsible for the development and implementation of policies to ensure that the national centre for geographic resources and analysis in primary health care achieves designated goals. Provide expert advice on the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to primary health care stakeholders. He is responsible for the maintenance of spatial information systems and of data quality and integrity. The principle responsibility is to build capacity and national resources to facilitate the use of GIS to inform locally relevant and equitable solutions for targeting health resources and services in Australia.

Mr Konings engages directly with research projects and undertakes spatial activities including geographic data acquisition, geocoding, spatial and data analyses, map making, web-based mapping, graphics and data visualisations. A critical success factor for GRAPHC is the implementation of an interactive on-line mapping facility to support research, planning and policy development in primary health care – this facility includes a wide array of publicly available data and mapping tools to support the display of that data, and a capacity for researchers to load their own data and map it in relation to the data in the system.

Research

Research interests

  • Data visualisation - Mapping
  • Facilitating the inclusion of location identifiers into researchers’ own data,
  • Enabling access to spatially based demographic and health data,
  • Workforce distribution
  • Open Data
  • Population Health Data Linkage
  • Spatial Analysis Methodology
  • Project Management (PRINCE 2) IT Service Management  (ITIL)

Collaborative research across national reference group network, leveraging GIS technologies

  • with CRCSI in Curtin University, advisory support for a PhD student at the CRCSI in Curtin University working on improving the useability of spatial technologies
  • with the Medical Deans of Australian & New Zealand for the Medical Student Outcomes Database project: MSOD Report: spatial mapping medical schools and student origins
  • with the CRCSI & Curtain University: The Impact of Australian Spatial Data Infrastructures on Geocoded Health Data.