Department of Defense developing cloud-based biosurveillance ecosystem

The Departments of Defense (DoD) and Homeland Security are developing a new system that allows researchers to scan the planet for anomalies in human and animal disease prevalence.

The Biosurveillance Ecosystem (BSVE) is a program from the DoD’s Threat Reduction Agency’s Joint Science and Technology Office for Chemical and Biological Defense.

“The BSVE ingests a wide variety of data sources – open-source data, social media and diagnostic data, and DoD, interagency, national and international surveillance system data,” DTRA scientist Dr. Christopher Kiley said. “Analytic applications and user-designed apps in the BSVE use the aggregated data streams to provide near-real-time modeling, analyses and visualized results.”

Officials said the program can warn of coming epidemics and protect warfighters in worldwide conflicts. The BSVE provides automated, intelligently suggested data, tools and analyses, and a user-friendly interface with updated reporting features.

The program is also being developed using large data streams, such as open-source social media feeds, RSS feeds from new organizations and blogs, disease ontologies, de-identified diagnostic results, historic outbreak data, zoonotic data and non-health data. Sources of data include the World Health Organization, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Organization for Animal Health.