An Analytic Framework for Space-Time Aberrancy Detection in Public Health Surveillance Data

Public health surveillance is changing in response to concerns about bioterrorism, which have increased the pressure for early detection of epidemics. Rapid detection necessitates following multiple non-specific indicators and accounting for spatial structure. No single analytic method can meet all of these requirements for all data sources and all surveillance goals. Analytic methods must be selected and configured to meet a surveillance goal, but there are no uniform criteria to guide the selection and configuration process. In this paper, we describe work towards the development of an analytic framework for space-time aberrancy detection in public health surveillance data. The framework decomposes surveillance analysis into sub-tasks and identifies knowledge that can facilitate selection of methods to accomplish sub-tasks.