College of Business Administration Quarterly Newsletter
                                                                                                                April 2006 - Volume 6.1

COBA Homepage :: The Executive :: Spotlight on COBA's Research on Bioterrorism Surveillance and Information Markets

  





































 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spotlight on COBA’s Research on Bioterrorism Surveillance and Information Markets


USF recently received research accolades with the National Science Foundation’s ranking as one of the fastest growing research universities in 2005, and most recently was listed in the Carnegie Foundation’s top classification among research universities in the nation.
 

One of the College of Business Administration’s (COBA) contributions to these accolades is a high-profile research project funded by the U.S. Department of Defense: The National Institute for Applied Computational Intelligence (NIACI).  The NIACI is an interdisciplinary research institute with participating faculty and students from the College of Engineering and COBA.
 

One highly visible COBA project in NIACI evaluates the effectiveness of bioterrorism surveillance systems, which are used to monitor the environment and detect bioterrorism agents, such as anthrax. The problem with testing the effectiveness of such a system is finding events to monitor.  Thankfully, few bioterrorism agents have been released into the environment.  “However, health emergencies due to natural causes hold great similarities to potential biological or chemical attacks via airborne agents,” said Dr. Alan Hevner, a professor in the Information Systems/Decision Sciences (IS/DS) Department and co-principal investigator for the NIACI grant. The project uses recent Florida wildfires (as seen in the figures below) as models for bioterrorist attacks. At the center of the system is a data warehouse that includes health care information from the state of Florida for the past several decades.  “Looking at data on hospital admissions due to respiratory illness during past wildfire periods can help us better understand how to develop a system for monitoring real-time data for abnormal illness patterns,” says Hevner. “There were significant wildfires in Florida in 2000 and 2001, which led to more incidents of asthma and other types of respiratory ailments.” When a connection such as this is discovered, researchers can use it to develop an improved surveillance system that will be able to more effectively identify an on-going anthrax attack based on real-time health care data.

        

NOAA Satellite Image, 2 July 2001, and Corresponding Wildfire Burn Scar Map
 
Dr. Hevner and Dr. Donald Berndt, also of the IS/DS department, have published several papers on this topic and expect to continue publishing as the project matures. The research will be featured in a chapter of the upcoming book National Security, which will be released as part of the Handbooks in Information Systems series in 2006.
 
Another NIACI project, headed by Dr. Berndt and Dr. Joni Jones involves using the concept of information markets, which are betting mechanisms created for the purpose of making predictions, to estimate the outcomes of software projects. Information markets have been used to make accurate predictions in the past. One example of the successful use of an information market is the Iowa Electronic Market, co-founded by COBA’s new dean Dr. Robert Forsythe. This program trades shares over the Internet that predict political and economic events, and has attracted national attention for its forecasts of presidential elections.  For the past 20 years, these political markets have consistently been better predictors of the presidential outcomes than the polls. “The basic idea is to use those same marketing mechanisms to allow all software development team members to express their individual estimates of milestone delivery dates, costs, quality levels, and other relevant aspects of a software project,” Dr. Hevner explained.
 
Companies that are planning a development project utilize this information market approach by having team members buy and sell shares regarding when they predict the project will be finished, how much budget the project will need, how much staff will be required and other factors.  NIACI believes that the estimates will be more accurate if team members are rewarded for their correct predictions. Several experiments using a prototype information market are being performed in COBA’s Information Systems classes this semester.
 
Among other activities associated with the institute, a graduate-level course on software testing is offered, which has garnered rave reviews from students. The course, Seminar on Software Testing, is also partially funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and has been an asset to student learning experiences. “I learned many things of value that I have already started to use at my current place of employment,” stated one student in a course evaluation. “I know that the software testing skills I have learned in this class will only become more beneficial.”
 
Research projects resulting from the NIACI grant are providing many exciting research opportunities to COBA faculty and students. The chance to participate in research this significant is without reservation an asset to USF and the community as a whole, helping elevate USF to its elite status.  Faculty and students look forward to participating in NIACI’s future research endeavors.