PURPOSE Although cancer centers need geospatially referenced cancer surveillance systems to track disease incidence and mortality rates for the communities they serve, most do not have the tools to allow them to identify which of the neighborhoods they serve have the greatest cancer care needs. Here, we describe the latest build of SCAN360, a web-enabled tool developed by the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, which describes disease burden and risk factors for hundreds of communities across south Florida. After describing some of the geographically encoded metrics from more than a dozen data sources, including the Florida State Cancer Registry, US census, and EPA, we describe innovative applications of geospatial analytics for cancer prevention research. METHODS Using the data harmonized within SCAN360, we applied geospatial hotspot analysis to identify locations with an unusually high burden of lung and gastric cancers, for intervention with community engagement and intervention. RESULTS To help increase the precision for such efforts, we overlaid these cancer hotspots on top of choropleth maps differentiating census tracts by socioeconomic disparities that are known to affect cancer control in the population. We also demonstrate how environmental data can be integrated with cancer surveillance data for assessing climate change impacts on melanoma risk. CONCLUSION SCAN360 and the case studies presented here offer deployment-ready examples for other cancer centers to follow when developing geospatially referenced surveillance systems for catchment area monitoring, outreach, and research.
Lee et al. (2026) studied this question.