The Future Event Driven World: Global Epidemic Warning Systems

Part 1 The Present Situation (revised 1-10-2008)

by David Luckham

This is the first of three articles on event-driven early warning systems for global epidemic outbreaks.

Isn’t it about time that monitoring for outbreaks of highly transmittable diseases throughout the world is based on a real time, autonomous, event processing infrastructure? Especially since in this age of air travel infectious diseases spread far more rapidly than any previous time in history. We are entering the age of the mobile Internet. Soon there will be several billion hand-held, pocket-sized computers accessing and dispersing information around the world. And the use of mobiles has proliferated in third world countries. We need to use this technology in detecting epidemic threats before they become pandemics. We’re talking about complex event processing for real-time global epidemiology.

Oh yes, but its happening already, isn’t it? There’s the Canadian GPHIN system, now adopted by the WHO. The CDC and DHS have bio-terrorism early warning systems based on the Internet. Google’s gotten into the act. And cross media organizations like TED are getting involved – right? No Worries then!

You’d better worry, and if you’re in complex event processing, you might want to get involved. download pdf