Event Detection Identifying patterns of interest in large temporal datasets Spatial Scan Statistic A method for identifying hotspots in spatial data, widely used in epidemiology and biosurveillance Scoring Function An objective function that measures the anomalousness of a subset of data LTSS Linear-time subset scanning Time to Detect Evaluation metric; time delay before detecting an event Over...

Introduction The National Science and Technology Council, within the Executive Office of the President, established the Pandemic Prediction and Forecasting Science and Technology (PPFST) Working Group in 2013. The PPFST Working Group supports the US Predict the Next Pandemic Initiative, and serves as a forum to accelerate the development of federal infectious disease outbreak prediction and for...

Detecting and monitoring populations of the invasive emerald ash borer (EAB) is crucial to successful management pest evaluation its ecological impacts. However, beetle’s cryptic habit makes accurate costly time-consuming. Biosurveillance takes advantage foraging effort a predatory wasp Cerceris fumipennis (Hymenoptera: Crabronidae). This native, solitary, ground-nesting hunting hunts adult bup...

Increasing biosurveillance capacity is a public health priority in both the developed and the developing world. Effective syndromic surveillance is especially important if we are to successfully identify and monitor disease outbreaks in their early stages. This paper describes the construction and preliminary evaluation of a syndromic surveillance orientated application ontology designed to fac...

Introduction An objective of the Joint VA/DoD BioSurveillance System for Emerging Biological Threats project is to improve situational awareness of the health of combined VA and DoD populations. DoD and VA both use versions of the Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics (ESSENCE). With a retrospective outpatient data collection available, we analyz...