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Why Big Data Missed the Early Warning Signs of Ebola
Hint: Ils ne parlent pas le français.
BY KALEV LEETARU SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
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HEALTH
AFRICA
snip
Earlier this month, Harvard's HealthMap service made world headlines for monitoring early mentions of the current Ebola outbreak on March 14, 2014, "nine days before the World Health Organization formally announced the epidemic," and issuing its first alert on March 19.
Much of the coverage of HealthMap's success has emphasized that its early warning came from using massive computing power to sift out early indicators from millions of social media posts and other informal media.
snip
The U.S. government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), which helps fund HealthMap, has used this success story as evidence that the approaches used in its Open Source Indicators program can indeed "beat the news" and provide the earliest warnings of impending disease outbreaks and conflict.
It's an inspirational story that is a common refrain in the "big data" world -- sophisticated computer algorithms sift through millions of data points and divine hidden patterns indicating a previously unrecognized outbreak that was then used to alert unsuspecting health authorities and government officials.
The problem is that this story isn't quite true:
By the time HealthMap monitored its very first report, the Guinean government had actually already announced the outbreak and notified the WHO.
The first public international warning of the impending epidemic came not from data mining or social media, but through more traditional channels: a news article in Xinhua's French-language newswire titled "Guinée: une étrange fièvre fait 8 morts à Macenta" published late in the day (eastern standard time) on March 13. The article reports that "a disease whose nature has not yet been identified has killed 8 people in the prefecture of Macenta in south-eastern Guinea ... it manifests itself as a hemorrhagic fever...." In turn, this newswire article was actually simply reporting on a press conference held earlier in the day by Dr. Sakoba Keita, director of the Division of Disease Prevention in the Guinea Department of Health, broadcast nationally on state television, that announced both the outbreak of the unknown hemorrhagic fever and the departure of a team of government medical personnel to the area to investigate it in more detail. The Xinhua article further notes that the government of Guinea had already formally notified the WHO of the unknown outbreak.
Thus, contrary to the narrative that data mining led to an intelligence coup of "beating the WHO," in fact HealthMap's earliest signals on March 14 were actually simply detections of this official government announcement. Despite all of the attention and hype paid to social media as a sensor network over human society, mainstream media still plays a critical role as an information stream in many areas of the world. This is not to say that there were not far earlier signals manifested in the myriad social conversations among medical workers and citizens in the region, only that it was not these indicators that HealthMap detected.
snip
There is a singular preoccupation in government today with forecasting the future. Yet, we must be careful that among investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in forecasting systems that have yet to produce useful results, we don't miss the early warning signs of emerging pandemics that are quite literally broadcast for us on national television. Instead of trying to "beat" the international news through massive investments in computer models, we should instead be focusing on listening better.
Pascal Guyot / AFP
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...signs_of_ebola
I agree we should be listening better. Thanks to Pathfinder for listening and posting the first English translation of the French report - which is the first post on our Guinee thread.
Why Big Data Missed the Early Warning Signs of Ebola
Hint: Ils ne parlent pas le français.
BY KALEV LEETARU SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
SHARE +
715 SHARES
HEALTH
AFRICA
snip
Earlier this month, Harvard's HealthMap service made world headlines for monitoring early mentions of the current Ebola outbreak on March 14, 2014, "nine days before the World Health Organization formally announced the epidemic," and issuing its first alert on March 19.
Much of the coverage of HealthMap's success has emphasized that its early warning came from using massive computing power to sift out early indicators from millions of social media posts and other informal media.
snip
The U.S. government's Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), which helps fund HealthMap, has used this success story as evidence that the approaches used in its Open Source Indicators program can indeed "beat the news" and provide the earliest warnings of impending disease outbreaks and conflict.
It's an inspirational story that is a common refrain in the "big data" world -- sophisticated computer algorithms sift through millions of data points and divine hidden patterns indicating a previously unrecognized outbreak that was then used to alert unsuspecting health authorities and government officials.
The problem is that this story isn't quite true:
By the time HealthMap monitored its very first report, the Guinean government had actually already announced the outbreak and notified the WHO.
The first public international warning of the impending epidemic came not from data mining or social media, but through more traditional channels: a news article in Xinhua's French-language newswire titled "Guinée: une étrange fièvre fait 8 morts à Macenta" published late in the day (eastern standard time) on March 13. The article reports that "a disease whose nature has not yet been identified has killed 8 people in the prefecture of Macenta in south-eastern Guinea ... it manifests itself as a hemorrhagic fever...." In turn, this newswire article was actually simply reporting on a press conference held earlier in the day by Dr. Sakoba Keita, director of the Division of Disease Prevention in the Guinea Department of Health, broadcast nationally on state television, that announced both the outbreak of the unknown hemorrhagic fever and the departure of a team of government medical personnel to the area to investigate it in more detail. The Xinhua article further notes that the government of Guinea had already formally notified the WHO of the unknown outbreak.
Thus, contrary to the narrative that data mining led to an intelligence coup of "beating the WHO," in fact HealthMap's earliest signals on March 14 were actually simply detections of this official government announcement. Despite all of the attention and hype paid to social media as a sensor network over human society, mainstream media still plays a critical role as an information stream in many areas of the world. This is not to say that there were not far earlier signals manifested in the myriad social conversations among medical workers and citizens in the region, only that it was not these indicators that HealthMap detected.
snip
There is a singular preoccupation in government today with forecasting the future. Yet, we must be careful that among investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in forecasting systems that have yet to produce useful results, we don't miss the early warning signs of emerging pandemics that are quite literally broadcast for us on national television. Instead of trying to "beat" the international news through massive investments in computer models, we should instead be focusing on listening better.
Pascal Guyot / AFP
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...signs_of_ebola
I agree we should be listening better. Thanks to Pathfinder for listening and posting the first English translation of the French report - which is the first post on our Guinee thread.
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