Abstract

Tracking Disease Outbreaks using Geotargeted Social Media and Big Data
Track: Public Health
Authors: Ming-Hsiang Tsou

We developed a social media analytics and research testbed (SMART) for monitoring disease outbreaks and public health issues in different cities using geo-targeted social media collection methods. Social Media APIs, Web GIS (ArcGIS Online), and machine learning methods (SVM) are integrated inside the SMART to help researchers filer data noises and analyze the spatiotemporal trends of distribution on various topics, including flu outbreaks, Ebola epidemics, and vaccine exemption.