Time to bring in the data people to start mining the data looking for patterns that would help us describe those that are disproportionately susceptible to contracting Ebola, as well as conducting spatial analysis. Plenty of capability exists for this type of work in Sierra Leone already and perhaps Liberia. For instance the FAO has Dynamic Atlas capability to support spatial analysis and adhoc analysis of data, to provide insights hitherto impossible to countenance. Moreover, the Dynamic Atlas Database licensed to FAO Sierra Leone already has geocodes and shape files for every town, village and chiefdom in Sierra Leone. I am sure this could provide the platform to quickly load data to conduct spatial analysis to look at what is happening in clusters of villages or communities. This capability can also provide a dynamic picture of spatial spread or contraction, as well as progression of the disease within specific communities or villages. It could also provide the possibility to conduct adhoc analysis of relative distribution of the disease in populations of interest in specific localities such as bike riders, traders etc. Such business intelligence can support micro targeting, enabling us to better target resources and further work smarter to defeat Ebola. Should help be required in Sierra Leone on these issues, Mr. Bakarr Tarawally, currently head of IT in the Ministry of Finance can effectively lead on ensuring that such capabilities are made available to the fight against Ebola.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 07:33:42 +0000
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