Developing Disease Surveillance System with GIS Technology
A A Gde Agung
ESRI Inc, USA
William Davenhall
Email: bdavenhall@esri.com
Abstract
Geography is an important variable in the surveillance of communicable diseases. In recent outbreaks of SARS, for example, ability to effectively detect in a timely manner the presence of disease in an area and to track the spread of disease geographically is very critical. This has placed GIS as a key technology in developing an effective disease surveillance system. Partial approach in the use of mapping techniques as commonly implemented in the past is no longer sufficient.
This paper discusses building blocks for disease surveillance where GIS and geospatial information is tightly integrated to support an effective surveillance and tracking system. This paper presents a successful model of building disease surveillance system for West Nile Virus. Scalability of such system and its practicality to be adopted for other similar types of surveillance will also be discussed. Author is a lead consultant at ESRI for a number of strategic implementations and developments of GIS technology for disease surveillance.