Hi All - Since SwineFlu is the new mapping hotness might as well add more fuel to the fire. (Insert GeoCommons commercial here) You can find or contribute data to GeoCommons using "swineflu" as the tag.
Here is a list of datasets contributed to date: US Human Cases of Swine Flu Infection, USA by State, as of 4.29.2009 at 11:00 am et = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12234 US Human Cases of Swine Flu Infection, USA by State, as of 4.30.2009 at 10:30 am et = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12249 Swine Flu Measures and Cases by Country, World, 4.27.2009 = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12172 H1N1 Swine Flu, Global, 2009 = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12130 Air-travel by airport of origin between US and Mexico, April 2008 = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12168 Confirmed Swine Flu Cases Worldwide by Country = www.finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12253 California School Closings due to Swine Flu, April 2009 = http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12257 Texas School Closings due to Swine Flu, April 2009 = http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12263 School Closings in NY, MI, OH, AZ due to Swine Flu, April 2009 http://finder.geocommons.com/overlays/12259 Also on the visualziation side a dashboard for maps of the datasets contributed to date. http://news.geocommons.com/swineflu In the more interesting category - there has been some criticism of crowdsourced data for tracking the flu. Specifically the Google My Map built by Dr. Henry Niman in regards to accuracy (see story from TechPresident below). We have this as one of the feeds listed above as well, but a topic worth discussion when it comes to data accuracy especially when it comes to media reports and the challenge of geocoding stories. This is challenging when the same event is reported by multiple sources and duplication becomes a issues. Particularily challenging when the outbreak is reported by different sources but are geocoded to different locations (centroid on New York State in one story and Manhattan in another story on the same outbreak instance). Story makes the case that the Google MyMap needs an editor. This sounds like what Rhiza Labs is doing - is that correct Josh? http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/wwgd-pandemic-google-swine-flu-map-needs-editor WWGD on Pandemic? Google Swine Flu Map Needs Editor Tom Watson | April 28, 2009 - 1:42pm | ShareThis | Email This! In the blast of social media noise, government warnings, blog posts, and breaking news updates this week on the expanding swine flu epidemic, one link seemed to carry some added weight: Google had posted a collaborative map to track the outbreak on a global basis. "Follow the Swine Flu Pandemic in Real Time With Google Maps," urged tech blog Gizmodo . The Twitter recommendations were legion. News outlets from MSNBC to the Chicago Tribune cited the online map, with its virtual push-pins linked to suspected and confirmed cases. Clearly, an example of a new paradigm of crowd-sourced reporting in a crisis, right? Perhaps. But there are a couple of serious problems with the much-hyped Google swine flu map: the Google team didn't put it up, and the map is fantastically inaccurate. The online map was launched by a Google user identified as niman, described as "Biomedical Research from Pittsburgh, PA USA." And, of course, in its terms of service, Google explicitly disclaims any representation of accuracy with respect to maps created by its users. Yet, the "Google map" was widely represented as being created by the search behemoth itself for the public good - as a leading digital tool for anyone wanting to track the epidemic in real time. It quickly garnered more than 131,000 views. And based on my own (unscientific) tracking of Twitter in the last 24 hours, many more posters included the Google map link than they did the official CDC site or the multi-agency federal PandemicFlu.gov site (both sites excellent and accurate). It was also clear that the Google map lacked the one thing a more journalistic or official government effort would clearly have provided: an editor. When I looked at the metropolitan New York area (where I live) for a an update, I was shocked to see a virtual sea of pink and purple markers stretching from Garden City in Nassau County to lower Manhattan and the Bronx. Wow, I thought, it's quickly gone way beyond those students from St. Francis Prep in Brooklyn who'd become ill after a spring break trip to Cancun. Except it hadn't. Of 14 markers in and around New York, 11 were merely repeating the high school story from different sources. So much (for now) for the metro area surge. The same pattern is repeated in Southern California. And in Spain, which has reported exactly two cases of confirmed swine flu, the Google map shows a virtual Iberian disaster. Sure, the Google map is an interesting experiment in collaborative reporting; yet it may be tricky for a company to let it stand as a branded effort, as one of its own products, given that the collaboration has produced a wildly inaccurate picture of the nascent pandemic - especially when its own Google.org team produced a well-regarded and more scientific flu trends map based on regional searches for symptoms and medical assistance. And the Google map's dangerous ubiquity among the wired classes is proof that someone living ought to be at the controls during times of peril - not to control (old model) but to at least authenticate (new model). Average: FortiusOne Inc, 2200 Wilson Blvd. suite 307 Arlington, VA 22201 cell - 202-321-3914 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Josh Knauer" <[email protected]> To: "Enrique Muñoz" <[email protected]> Cc: "Rodrigo Tapia-McClung" <[email protected]>, [email protected] Sent: Thursday, April 30, 2009 5:49:50 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Geowanking] collective swine flu API googlemaps Enrique- We're working with researchers that have been mapping the reported cases of H1N1 swine flu based on user input, reports in the media and official data being released by governments. You can see the initial results here: http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com Dr. Henry Niman is heading up the data collection/vetting process and we at Rhiza Labs have stepped in to build infrastructure for him to collect the data in a more structured manner than just dropping pins on a map. The structured data helps researchers so that they can track the spread of the flu using multiple dimensions. We believe that this will help provide more accurate and useful data in the long run, especially if the number of reported cases starts to grow considerably. Anyone can download the latest raw data in CSV or KML by registering (free) on the site and then just picking the dataset they want to download. We're also making available a few datasets that have the data aggregated to shapes of political geographies (counties, states/ provinces, countries, etc.). When users click through from the front page at http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com they can also build and share their own map visualizations and/or import other related data and visualize it along with the flu data. We're expecting to have some socio-economic analysis of where the flu is hitting within a few days, and we hope to see other data analysis starting to come in from users soon. The reason that efforts like this are needed are that there is a big gap between the number of suspected cases that are being reported and the official estimates from governments around the world. It's very early in all of this, but we are starting to see a general trend that the cases that are starting out as suspected are by in large turning into confirmed cases, which means that these types of user-generated tracking sites do represent a good indicator system as to the direction of the spread of this flu. Please let me know if you have any questions! Thanks, -josh Josh Knauer, CEO of Rhiza Labs [email protected] | office: 412-488-0600 | cell: 412-551-2163 | twitter: jknauer On Apr 30, 2009, at 1:15 AM, Enrique Muñoz wrote: > Three days ago we developed this API, trying to help to monitoring > the spread of the flu, using ajax with php > storing data in xml. Looking for the public participation to locate > contagious and deceased that they know the case. > > http://uchalas.com/influenza/index_en.html > > we are trying to solve some issues.. > > - How to control the submits of each user (participant)? via e- > mail, googlespreadsheets, DB connection, xml restrictions for > posting the entries, etc. We dont know what to do > - How to restict the selection of markers over the ocean and water > bodies? > - How to detect the replication of one case of flu in the xml data > storing file? > > please, if you have some others issues that we couldnt detect, feel > free to express it! > > Any ideas? > > > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org
