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Mapping the Risk of International Infectious Disease Spread (MRIIDS)

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User friendly tool mapping the Risks of Outbreak Events Spreading (see Presentation)

Project summary

Problem: In our increasingly interconnected world, it is crucial to understand the risk of an outbreak originating in humans or animals in one country or region and then spreading to the rest of the world. This has been done in the past for specific pathogens, but there is no automated probabilistic framework that allows real-time mapping of the risk of exportation of an outbreak event from country X to any other country Y.

Solution: ISID, along with Imperial College London, HealthMap, and Healthsites.io, will develop and deploy a user-friendly tool to estimate and visualize risks posed by outbreak events reported on ProMED to the rest of the world by combining multiple data streams into a single probabilistic framework. Developed for one pathogen and focusing on one geographic region, the prototype will be designed to be rapidly scalable by extending it to pathogens of significance to humans and animals on a global scale. The system will inform public health experts, health care workers, and the public of the risks of an outbreak spreading, and will aid government and non-governmental decision makers globally in allocating resources and preparing for the possible importation of an infectious disease threat to their country or region.

Schematic overview of the proposed tool including data streams.

Number of use cases over time and space. From https://www.promedmail.org/
Transmissibility of pathogen From literature reviews. Can vary across space for example as a result of climate.
Connectivity between locations Various models and data sources will be explored.
Host & environment susceptibility For example vaccine coverage. From https://www.ghsagenda.org/ and other sources
Ability to contain the outbreak Healthcare capacity of a region. From https://healthsites.io/