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DISEASE OCCURRENCE MAPS.
ABRAID – The Atlas of Baseline Risk Assessment for Infectious Diseases (ABRAID - www.abraid.ox.ac.uk) - is building a system that uses disease reports published online to update maps of disease risk. If you would be interested in either using these maps or contributing to the validation of the data going into the maps, ABRAID would be interested in your feedback on their site. The site currently displays maps for dengue and New World cutaneous leishmaniasis and they will add new diseases throughout the next two years. The maps are based on data that confirms the location of the disease outbreaks, however, data is not available for every location at every point in time. ABRAID uses mathematical models to fill these gaps and predict the probbality of occurence at all locations.
The system produces fine-scale maps of predicted disease occurrence that are regularly updated. It updates the maps using a niche model, environmental and socioeconomic data, and 1) data from online reports of disease outbreaks, 2) disease datasets manually collated and published by our group, and 3) ad hoc disease datasets provided by external organisations. Disease outbreak data is linked to a geographical location and the system checks all location data. The disease data itself is validated by a machine learning process that is trained by disease experts who can register and validate data at https://www.abraid.ox.ac.uk/register/account and www.abraid.ox.ac.uk/datavalidation. We also ask disease experts to provide their expert opinion on whether the disease is present in different regions of the world (by selecting the disease extent from the first dropdown box at www.abraid.ox.ac.uk/datavalidation).
The website provides fine resolution maps and disease extent maps that can be viewed and downloaded (as images or data), input datasets that can be downloaded, and information about the top predictors for a particular disease at a particular time (these come from the suite of environmental and socioeconomic variables used).
The website currently displays updating maps for dengue and New World leishmaniasis. Other leishmaniases will be added soon and then CCHF, melioidosis, chikungunya, knowlesi malaria, HAT, Chagas, JE, yellow fever and more. The ABRAID group is consulting key groups about the current website and about new functions you might like to see in the future.
A link to their feedback form is here – https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CY3KB9K It would be really useful to have feedback from your team if there are any features you would like to see from the perspective of your work, or if you have any general comments.
Dr Catherine Moyes of the University of Oxford presented in this method at the RSTMH Modern digital methods in epidemiology meeting in London on the 30th of March 2014. Her presentation can be viewed by clicking on this link "The use of internet data to ensure predictive disease maps are continually updated", as well as on the RSTMH YouTube channel.
