Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

DATA SOURCES FOR BIOSURVEILLANCE

RONALD A. WALTERS

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Washington

PETE A. HARLAN, NOELE P. NELSON, AND DAVID M. HARTLEY

Division of Integrated Biodefense, Imaging Science and Information Systems, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C.

1 INTRODUCTION

As recognized recently in the 2005 revision of the International Health Regulations, early detection of disease is vital in responding to dangerous situations in a timely manner [1]. Researchers have explored the potential for identifying distinctive environmental [2–4], climatic [5–7], and human behavior [8–10] signatures for rapid identification of outbreaks and epidemics [11]. Biosurveillance is the discipline in which diverse data streams such as these are characterized in real or near–real-time to provide early warning and situational awareness of events affecting human, plant, and animal health. Biosurveillance is distinct from the traditional public health surveillance; in that biosurveillance does not rely on classical epidemiologic studies or clinical data, the availability of which can be limited and nearly always lag the events they describe by days or months.

Many biosurveillance systems provide graded alerting of potential infectious disease outbreaks and refine the degree of confidence in these alerts as additional data becomes available. In this way, systems support graded response by public health, agriculture, and other decision makers [12]. Within such a ...