ISSS608 2017-18 T1 Assign GE BIN

Smartpolis Epidemic Spread

Overview

Smartpolis is a major metropolitan area with a population of approximately two million residents. During the last few days, health professionals at local hospitals have noticed a dramatic increase in reported illnesses.

Observed symptoms are largely flu­like and include fever, chills,sweats, aches and pains, fatigue, coughing, breathing difficulty, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and enlarged lymph nodes. More recently, there have been several deaths believed to be associated with the current outbreak. City officials fear a possible epidemic and are mobilizing emergency management resources to mitigate the impact. You have been charged with providing an assessment of the situation.

two datasets were provided. The first one contains microblog messages collected from various devices with GPS capabilities. These devices include laptop computers, handheld computers, and cellular phones. The second one contains map information for the entire metropolitan area. The map dataset contains a satellite image with labeled highways, hospitals, important landmarks, and water bodies. We also provide supplemental tables for population statistics and observed weather data.

Task

• Origin and Epidemic Spread

Identify approximately where the outbreak started on the map (ground zero location). Outline the affected area. Explain how you arrived at your conclusion.

• Epidemic Spread

Present a hypothesis on how the infection is being transmitted. For example, is the method of transmission person-­to­-person, airborne, waterborne, or something else? Identify the trends that support your hypothesis.

Is the outbreak contained? Is it necessary for emergency management personnel to deploy treatment resources outside the affected area? Explain your reasoning.

Work Around

To find the origin and epidemic spread location, airborne and waterborne disease symptoms are filtered via JMP.

Airborne	Waterborne
fever	pain
flu	diarrhea
headache	nausea
sweat	vomit
pneumonia	cramp
sore throat	loss of appetite
caught a fever	reflux
running nose	heartburn
problems breathing
shortness of breath

On May 18th, there are abnormal posts with airborne disease symptoms. The sudden increase of number of posts started from May 18th 8AM. The main locations are in Uptown and Downtown.

On May 19th, there are abnormal posts with waterborne disease symptoms. From 2AM of May 19th, the posts about waterborne disease symptoms increased. They mainly are in Smogtown and Plainville.

The two types epidemic outbreak were located at different zones and different time. For the airborne disease, it should come from west of Uptown and Downtown according to the wind direction. While for the waterborne disease, there's a river between Somgtown and Southville, it should come from there.

To see what cause the epidemic outbreak, I traced 3 days back and found there was an explosion happened at Somgtown around May 17,9AM. The topic last until May 17,8PM.

There's also a track accident and caused fire around May 17, 11AM at road 610 bridge which is exactly to the west of Downtown.

After drill down the data, it is quite clear that, airborne diseases were caused by the truck accident on 17th, 11AM and waterborne diseases were caused by the explosion nearby the Smogtown riverside.

Both diseases are contained until May 20th because both diseases didn't spread to other zones.

The Tableau workbook is available at following link.

Visualisation Software

To perform the visual analysis, students are encouraged to explore any one or a combination of the following software:

• Tableau
• JMP Pro