Geoprofiling Technique for Disease Epidemic Control

In my previous post, I have discussed geoprofiling technique used to catch serial killer. The technique sounds very interesting and I have been thinking about what other possible applications are possible.

Some days back, I read about the how the contagious diseases spread in developing countries. It takes a combination of several factors for a disease like Malaria to form epidemic.

Given a large city like Mumbai, one or a few of these factors can exist in many places. However there will be a few ideal places where almost all such factors are present. If we could find these places, and take some action to reduce the number of Malaria factors, we could decrease the probability of Malaria epidemic.

When the patient visits the doctor, the doctor could ask the patient the area where he/she spends most of the time. That location should be pinned on the map. When we have many such locations pinned, they will most likely form a closed loop. Geographical center of this loop should be our best guess of center of epidemic.

It is a generally consensus within scientists that the worldwide rising temperatures due to global warming will most likely cause increase in disease epidemic instances. We will need to arm ourselves with every possible tool we can.