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A COLLABORATIVE EPIDEMICAL SURVEILLANCE AND RESPONSE SYSTEM 
BASED ON GIS AND INFORMATION TECHNIQUE 
HU Bisong 2 '* *, GONG Jianhua 3 ’*, SUN Jia 3 , CAO Wuchun b , FANG Liqun b 
a Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 
Datun Road 3, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100101, P.R. China 
b Institute of Microbiology Epidemiology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Beijing, 100071, P.R. China 
Commission I, ICWG-I/V 
KEY WORDS: Bayesian Analysis, Collaborative, C/S, Epidemiology, GIS, Response, Surveillance, Scan Statistics, 
ABSTRACT: 
Since the manual operations of traditional epidemical surveillance and response are excessive, there are obvious drawbacks of 
sensitiveness and effectiveness during the process of surveillance and response. GIS and information technique could help lessen 
those disadvantages and promote the preciseness and efficiency of epidemical surveillance and response. Existed epidemical 
surveillance and emergency response systems are completely separate on the whole. Due to the time difference caused by the 
manual operations, the persons working for public health cannot deal with the bursting diseases in time and effectively. A 
collaborative epidemical surveillance and response system, which is designed with C/S structure and based on internet and mobile 
network, was studied and designed, and its collaborative prototype system was implemented. A complete work flow of epidemical 
surveillance, fieldwork and emergency response was built up in this paper. The surveillance algorithm applied in this system is 
spatial and space-time scan statistics, and Bayesian analysis is used in the intelligent disease diagnosis module of the response 
system. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
GIS could provide geographic data related to diseases and 
analysis methods for spatial data. Information technique could 
provide effective technologic methods for the epidemical 
modeling. Therefore, GIS and information technique are 
increasingly applied and playing an important role in the 
epidemical researches. Many epidemical researches focus on 
the distribution and determinants of diseases and injuries in 
human populations, and the transmission factors and 
characteristics. The combination of spatial data provided by 
GIS and disease data can help researchers analyze and 
understand the relationship of epidemical rules and 
circumstance factors. Furthermore, GIS could answer the 
questions related to the space and time of disease burst, since 
infectious diseases have both spatial and temporal 
characteristics while transmitting. 
The bursting of various infectious diseases on different regions 
of the world has done much harm to the safety of population 
life and property, causes the social panic and turmoil easily, and 
influences the social and economic development. Many 
researches focus on the development of convenient and useful 
epidemical surveillance information systems. And after the 
significant infectious disease bursting, to reduce the loss and 
damage to a minimum, the response and treatments to disease 
bursting and the managements of response resource, which are 
the main contents of emergency response information system, 
are extremely required. 
Traditional epidemical surveillance relied on the clinical 
physicians and laboratory reports. It has obvious disadvantages 
in sensitivity and efficiency due to the complexity of 
surveillance persons and programs. Current epidemical 
surveillance includes collecting and sorting of disease data, 
automatic data analysis, result report and detection, abnormal 
signal feedback and validity evaluation. It adopts new methods, 
such as spatial data analysis and spatial statistics, and has 
prominent promotion in precision and efficiency. 
Emergency response in public health is adopting emergent 
measures and lightening the injury to citizen health and life due 
to the bursting epidemical events, and controlling the damage 
into minimum area by applying most effective measures and 
least resource waste. In general, an emergent treatment system 
should comprise a series of functions, such as assistant query, 
event treatment, and assistant disease diagnosis. Because the 
bursting events are abrupt and unexpected, the response 
personnel have especial demands on emergency response 
systems in mobile equipments. 
Many researchers studied and developed GIS-based epidemical 
surveillance information systems (Tsui, et al, 2003; Kelly, et al, 
2004; CAO, et al, 2006; Drake, 2005; Jacquez, et al, 2005), and 
received nice effects in practical applications. Existed 
epidemical response information systems (Piot, et al, 2001; 
Kaplan, et al, 2002; Li, et al, 2004; WANG, et al, 2005; Chai, et 
al, 2007) mainly focus on the response methods and functions 
after disease bursting, and have not reached a collaborative and 
integrated work mode with the surveillance systems. In other 
words, most epidemical surveillance systems and emergency 
response systems are completely separate. There are still 
manual operations between the surveillance and response. Due 
to the time difference caused by the manual operations, the 
* Corresponding author. Email: hubisong624@126.com; Phone: +86-10-64849299 (O); Fax: +86-10-64849299. 
* Corresponding author. Email: jianhuagong@sina.com; Phone: +86-10-64849299 (O); Fax: +86-10-64849299.