ISSS608 2017-18 T1 Assign ZHANG PENG

VAST Challenge: Characterization of an Epidemic Spread

assignment overview

• Identify approximately where the outbreak started on the map (ground zero location). Outline the affected area.
• 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?

Data Description

xxx

Dataset Overview

1 dataset1	2 dataset2
xxx	xxx

Interactive Visualization

You may have your own investigation here: link

Analysis Results

Question 1

1. Filter keywords from Microblogs texting I chose observed symptoms as keywords to filter out related Microblogs by using JMP. The observed symptoms contain chills, sweats, aches and pains, fatigue, coughing, breathing difficulty, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and enlarged lymph nodes. I use the symptom-related keywords and frequency of these words to improve accuracy.

2. Find out the outbreak time We can find all the symptoms are sharply increased from May 18 and partial from May 19 in below line-chart. I only need to do deep analysis from May 17 to May 20.

3. Find out the affected areas The symptom words used on May 18 are related to aches, breath, chills, cough, fatigue and sweats. These symptoms outbroke mainly in Uptown, Downtown and Eastside.

The symptom in Uptown, Downtown and Eastside is like flu. So that on May 19, in the same place, the word ‘flu’ was used more frequently. (Figure3: Compare flu frequency on May 18 and May 19).

Conclusion1: The first affected area is clustered near the centre as Uptown, Downtown. The symptom is like flu. However, other different partial symptoms are clustered near downstream in Southville and Smogtown on May 19 and May 20. They are diarrhea, nausea, stomach and vomit. We find out that it is a like stomach-ache symptom. (Figure4)

Conclusion2: The second affected area is near downstream in Plainville and Smogtown one day later than the first affected area. The symptom is like stomach ache. Combine conclusion 1 and conclusion 2, we can achieve that the first outbreak area is near the centre. The second outbreak area is near downstream of the river. The symptoms in these two areas are totally different.

Question 2

1. Flu-like symptom and Stomach-ache are transmitted by different way Reason: From Q1 we achieved that there are two different symptoms. The first is a flu-like symptom and the second is a stomach-ache like symptom. In the second and third day of outbreak, people in Downtown and Uptown did not have the same symptom as stomach-ache. In another word, stomach-ache infection will not spread to other places.

The stomach-ache like symptom is limited in the same areas and did not affect other areas. However, by comparing the flu-like symptom in the first outbreak day and the last day, the flu-like symptom has been affected to the whole country. As a result, we can conclude that Flu-like symptom and Stomach-ache infections are transmitted by different way. Moreover, we need to analyse these two symptoms separately.

2. The stomach-ache symptom is more likely transmitted by waterborne Is the stomach-ache symptom spread by waterborne? The answer is yes. On May 18, the stomach-ache like symptom was outbreak near both sides of the river near the downstream simultaneously. This trend corresponded with the flow of river from North to South. In fact, the stomach-ache is always caused by food or water as a common sense. Residents and businesses get their drinking water by pumping water from nearby reservoirs or rivers. As a result, stomach-ache symptom has a high possibility of spread by waterborne.

Is the stomach-ache symptom spread by person-person? The answer is no. the day time population in Plainvile is smaller than night which means many working people would back to Plainvile on May19. However, on May20, these people back to work and they are not affected. Stomach-ache symptom is only limited under downstreaming. image

Is the stomach-ache symptom spread by air-borne? The answer is no. Although the direction of wind is nearly from west to east, Southville and Lakeside areas did not find any symptom like stomach-ache symptom.