What is Computational Epidemiology

Infectious diseases, such as the recent Ebola outbreak, can be especially dangerous for large communities on today's highly connected world. Countermeasures can be put in place if one is able to predict determine which people are more vulnerable to infections or have been in contact with the disease, and where. Contact location, time and relationship with the subject are relevant metrics that affect the probability of disease propagation. Sensors on personal devices that gather information from people, and social networks analysis, allow the integration of community data, while data analysis and modelling may potentially indicate community-level susceptibility to an epidemic. Indeed, there has been interest on social networks for epidemic prediction. But the integration between large-scale sensor networks and these initiatives, required to achieve epidemic prediction, is yet to be achieved. In this context, an opportunistic system is proposed and evaluated for predicting an epidemic outbreak in a community, while guaranteeing user privacy.