How Big Data Analytics Can Save Human from Epidemic Diseases
M. M. Arif Bakhtiar, General Member
Early 2020 is a very challenging time in human history. Newspaper, Internet, Facebook, and other social media is flooded with the news Corona Virus(SARS-CoV-2) outbreak. In December of 2019, China reported the Coronavirus outbreak. The virus is creating a disease which is called COVID-19(Corona Virus Disease 2019). The virus is spread almost every region of the world and creating the disease silently.WHO(World Health Organization) has declared the outbreak an international health emergency. Many people every day is dying in different countries because of respiratory failure or organ failure because of this virus and the new disease has no treatment at all. The virus is a heavy spreader so this is a very dangerous and lethal virus. So the scientists and virologists are telling people to make the distance from everybody. They are using some terms social distancing, quarantine and tells people to follow it to prevent the virus from further spreading. Scientists say that prevention is the only known treatment for this new viral disease.
Today we will discuss how Big Data analysis can help to control this kind of global epidemic or pandemic disasters.
What is Big Data?
In easy words, Big Data is a field of technology that uses software/tools to extract information from very large and complex data sets. Nowadays capturing essential information by analyzing data in different fields such as technology, human behavior, tracking, business expansion, advertisement is very important for marketing, business plan, etc. So Big Data analytic can help these fields with increased efficiency.
How does Big Data work?
Every second every digital device is making data and they are being stored. They are being analyzed and the companies are giving more personalized experiences to the users. That could be showing advertisement, new product design, etc. So Big Data Analytics works with the processing and extracting information from a huge number of complex data sets.
How Big Data can help in the Control of Global Disease Epidemic?
Viral diseases spread human to human. So, first of all, there should be the use of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence or Biometric identification (such as face recognition or so on) along with thermal imaging to identify individual people also there should be enough Close Circuit Camera(CCTV) that covers human track and habitat and can detect faces. The data of all cameras should be stored and by analyzing the data with Big Data Analytics we can find a single individual's interaction with others. For example, Taiwan used "who got it from whom" logic to find the potential Corona Virus host and spreader who are silently spreading the disease without showing the sickness of infection. Taiwan has given access to information about the potential host to the general people, restaurant and pharmacies. So the people can know about the track of the host and they have taken the necessary steps to avoid getting the infection. It's a great success for Taiwan that they are very successful to stop the spreading of the virus. Compared to other countries they have reported a very low amount of new infection and deaths.
So it can be a very good technique to slow the spread of the epidemic diseases for every country by using Big Data. Other countries can learn from Taiwan and prepare to control the epidemic disaster like Corona Virus Disease, Ebola, SARS(Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), MERS(Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), etc. Also, these epidemic disasters can be identified at the primary level by using thermal imaging and Big Data. Because fever is a very good identification of this type of disease (Viral Flu, Malaria, Dengue, etc). So Big Data can help the modern world to control the spreading of new emerging diseases.
