Iarocci Emily

Argus is an event-based surveillance system which captures information from publicly available Internet media in multiple languages. The information is contextualized and indications and warning (I&W) of disease are identified. Reports are generated by regional experts and are made available to the system's users. In this study a small-scale disease event, plague emergence, was tracked in a rural setting, despite media suppression and a low availability of epidemiological information.

Objective

To demonstrate how event-based biosurveillance can be utilized to closely monitor disease emergence in an isolated rural area, where medical information and epidemiological data are limited, toward identifying areas for public health intervention improvements.

Argus is an event-based, multi-lingual surveillance system which captures and analyzes information from publicly available Internet media. Argus produces reports that summarize and contextualize indications and warning (I&W) of emerging threats, and makes these reports available to the system's users. The significance of the Escherichia coli (EHEC) outbreak analyzed here lies primarily in the fact that it raised epidemiological questions and public health infrastructure concerns that have yet to be resolved, and required the development of new resources for detecting and responding to newly-emerging epidemics.

Objective

To demonstrate how event-based biosurveillance, using direct and indirect I&W of disease, provides early warning and situational awareness of the emergence of infectious diseases that have the potential to cause social disruption and negatively impact public health infrastructure, trade, and the economy. Specifically, tracking of I&W during the 2011 enterohaemorrhagic EHEC O104:H4 outbreak in Germany and Europe was selected to illustrate this methodology.

If the next influenza pandemic emerges in Southeast Asia, the identification of early detection strategies in this region could enable public health officials to respond rapidly. Accurate, real-time influenza surveillance is therefore crucial. Novel approaches to the monitoring of infectious disease, especially respiratory disease, are increasingly under evaluation in an effort to avoid the cost- and timeintensive nature of active surveillance, as well as the processing time lag of traditional passive surveillance. In response to these issues, we have developed an indications and warning (I&W) taxonomy of pandemic influenza based on social disruption indicators reported in news media.

Objective

Our aim is to analyze news media for I&W of influenza to determine if the signals they create differ significantly between seasonal and pandemic influenza years.

NBIC is charged with enhancing the capability of the Federal Government to enable early warning and shared situational awareness of acute biological events to support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking. A key aspect of this mission is the requirement to integrate and collaborate with federal and, state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) government agencies. NBIC develops and disseminates a variety of products to its stakeholders, including daily reports, ad-hoc reports, analytic collaborations, and leadership briefings upon request. Stakeholders interact with and utilize NBIC’s products in different ways, depending on the mission and jurisdiction involved. Specific collaborations with individual stakeholders are most frequent and evident during major infectious disease events, such as the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders PHEIC. Collaborative efforts and known outcomes among varying levels of government are described in detail below in order to highlight NBIC’s integration focus and capabilities in this role.

Objective:

An important part of the National Biosurveillance Integration Center’s (NBIC) mission is collaboration with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments for the purpose of enhancing early warning, shared situational awareness, and related decision support for infectious disease events. Several such collaborations occurred at multiple jurisdictional levels during the recent Zika epidemic in the Americas and the associated microcephaly and other neurological disorders Public Health Event of International Concern (PHEIC). The collaborations and their known outcomes from this major infectious disease event are described below, and NBIC stands ready to support similar efforts for future events.

NBIC integrates, analyzes, and distributes key information about health and disease events to help ensure the nation’s responses are well-informed, save lives, and minimize economic impact. To meet its mission objectives, NBIC utilizes a variety of data sets, including open source information, to provide comprehensive coverage of biological events occurring across the globe. NBIC Biofeeds is a digital tool designed to improve the efficiency of analyzing large volumes of open source reporting and increase the number of relevant insights gleaned from this dataset. Moreover, the tool provides a mechanism to disseminate tailored, electronic message notifications in near-real time so that NBIC can share specific information of interest to its interagency partners in a timely manner. NBIC is deploying the tool for operational use by the Center and eventual use by federal partners with biosurveillance mission objectives. Core functionality for data collection, curation, and dissemination useful to other federal agencies was implemented, and NBIC is incorporating custom taxonomies for capturing metadata specific to the unique missions of NBIC partners.

Objective:

The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) is deploying a scalable, flexible open source data collection, analysis, and dissemination tool to support biosurveillance operations by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its federal interagency partners.