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Sandia National Laboratories internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program is sponsoring work on ways to defend against bioterror attacks. This work is focused in two areas:
- Development of enterprise modeling systems to facilitate real-time sharing and knowledge extraction from large medical record data bases, and
- Development of pattern recognition techniques to detect the onset of epidemics in such data bases.
In the pattern recognition aspect of this work, we are currently examining techniques that can detect the onset of epidemics in spatially and temporally aggregated data.
A number of statistical tools can be brought to bear on the problem of epidemic detection in spatial-temporal data. One combination of temporal Poisson processes and spatial clustering has been used to advantage in early detection of flu epidemics in France (Koch and McKenna, 2001). Besides the data from France, we have also looked at numerical simulation of the spread of infectious diseases across a population using a discrete (individual based) SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected, Recovered) model (McKenna, 2000). A lingering question concerns the degree of connection and the ability to transmit diseases between individuals in a population. The previous SEIR simulations have assumed that individuals were well connected in a two dimensional space. We are now examining simulations in two-dimensional fractal spaces. One example of a fractal space that we are exploring are those created through models of diffusion limited aggregation (DLA).
Papers:
- McKenna, S.A., R.L. Bilisoly and M.W. Koch, 2002, Comparing Techniques for Detection of Epidemics in Public Health Surveillance Data, in proceedings of: BTR 2002: Unified Science and Technology for Reducing Biological Threats and Countering Terrorism, March 14-15, University of New Mexico.
- Koch, M.W. and S.A. McKenna, Near-Real Time Surveillance against Bioterror Attack using Space-Time Clustering, published in: Workshop on Unified Science and Technology for Biological Threat Reduction,SAND2001-0695C, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 16 and 17, 2001.
- McKenna, S.A., 2000, Development of a Discrete Spatial-Temporal SEIR Simulator for Modeling Infectious Diseases, SAND2000-2232, Sandia National Laboratories. Albuquerque, New Mexico, 23 pp.
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