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Database Systems and Data Warehouses

Bioterrorism Surveillance Systems

The development of an effective bioterrorism surveillance system requires effective solutions to several critical challenges.  The system must support multidimensional historical data, provide real-time surveillance of sensor data, have the capability for pattern recognition to quickly identify abnormal situations, and provide an analytic environment that accelerates investigations by epidemiologists and other responders.  The use of real-time or flash data warehousing provides the essential ability to compare unfolding health events with historical patterns of key surveillance indicators.  A principal contribution of this research is the adroit use of online analytic processing (OLAP) techniques, along with spatial and statistical analyses, to study the adverse effects of biochemical agents.  These techniques will provide important capabilities for epidemiologist-in-the-loop surveillance systems, enabling the rapid exploration of unusual situations and guidance for follow-up investigations.

Journal Publications and Book Chapters

  1. D. Berndt, A. Hevner, and J. Griffiths, “Managing Real-Time Bioterrorism Surveillance Data,” Chapter in National Security, Edited by H. Chen, T.S. Raghu, R. Ramesh, A. Vinze, and D. Zeng, Handbooks in Information Systems Series, Elsevier, Inc., 2006.
  2. D. Berndt, J. Fisher, J. Griffiths, A. Hevner, S. Luthur, and J. Studnicki, “The Role of Data Warehousing for Bioterrorism Surveillance,” to appear in Decision Support Systems, Special Issue on Cybersecurity for Homeland Security. 2006.

Refereed Conference Publications

  1. J. Griffiths, D. Berndt, and A. Hevner, “Naturally Occurring Incidents as Facsimiles for Bioterrorist Attacks,” Proceedings of 4th Symposium on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI 2006), San Diego, CA, May 2006.
  2. D. Berndt, S. Bhat, J. Fisher, A. Hevner, and J. Studnicki, “Data Analytics for Bioterrorism Surveillance,” Proceedings of Second Symposium on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI 2004), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 3073, Springer-Verlag, June 2004, pp. 18-29.
  3. D. Berndt, A. Hevner, and J. Studnicki, “Bioterrorism Surveillance with Real-Time Data Warehousing,” Proceedings of First NSF/NIJ Symposium on Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI 2003), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 2665, Springer-Verlag, June 2003, pp. 322-335.