[Geowanking] collective swine flu API googlemaps

[Josh Knauer]

Enrique-

We're working with researchers that have been mapping the reported  
cases of H1N1 swine flu based on user input, reports in the media and  
official data being released by governments.  You can see the initial  
results here:  http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com

Dr. Henry Niman is heading up the data collection/vetting process and  
we at Rhiza Labs have stepped in to build infrastructure for him to  
collect the data in a more structured manner than just dropping pins  
on a map.  The structured data helps researchers so that they can  
track the spread of the flu using multiple dimensions.  We believe  
that this will help provide more accurate and useful data in the long  
run, especially if the number of reported cases starts to grow  
considerably.

Anyone can download the latest raw data in CSV or KML by registering  
(free) on the site and then just picking the dataset they want to  
download.  We're also making available a few datasets that have the  
data aggregated to shapes of political geographies (counties, states/ 
provinces, countries, etc.).  When users click through from the front  
page at http://flutracker.rhizalabs.com they can also build and share  
their own map visualizations and/or import other related data and  
visualize it along with the flu data.  We're expecting to have some  
socio-economic analysis of where the flu is hitting within a few days,  
and we hope to see other data analysis starting to come in from users  
soon.

The reason that efforts like this are needed are that there is a big  
gap between the number of suspected cases that are being reported and  
the official estimates from governments around the world.  It's very  
early in all of this, but we are starting to see a general trend that  
the cases that are starting out as suspected are by in large turning  
into confirmed cases, which means that these types of user-generated  
tracking sites do represent a good indicator system as to the  
direction of the spread of this flu.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks,

-josh


Josh Knauer, CEO of Rhiza Labs
knauer at rhizalabs.com | office: 412-488-0600 | cell: 412-551-2163 |  
twitter: jknauer

On Apr 30, 2009, at 1:15 AM, Enrique Muñoz wrote:

> Three days ago we developed this API, trying to help to monitoring  
> the spread of the flu, using ajax with php
> storing data in xml. Looking for the public participation to locate  
> contagious and deceased that they know the case.
>
> http://uchalas.com/influenza/index_en.html
>
> we are trying to solve some issues..
>
> - How to control the submits of each user (participant)?  via e- 
> mail, googlespreadsheets, DB connection, xml restrictions for  
> posting the entries, etc. We dont know what to do
> - How to restict the selection of markers over the ocean and water  
> bodies?
> - How to detect the replication of one case of flu in the xml data  
> storing file?
>
> please, if you have some others issues that we couldnt detect, feel  
> free to express it!
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
>
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